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Magazine
Racket on the rooftop
RANJIT LAL
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No place like the terrace or rooftop, if you want to observe the life and times of your avian neighbours.
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The brown-headed barbets would begin extolling the virtues of summer, while a magpie robin stood up and gave a mellifluous concert.
Photo: Ranjit Lal
Got to look good: A male Plum-headed parakeet sprucing up.
I have always extolled the virtues of birding from your balcony or verandah, there’s no stumbling sleepy-eyed into the paths of insufferably cheerful, early-morning walkers; you just peer groggily at the birds alighting on the trees in front of you as your cup of tea wakes you up. But now I’ve found an even better alternative — if you have a terrace or rooftop which is accessible, hoist yourself up there and take a look around. If your house or building abuts or adjoins a park or garden, or there are trees around, you’ve got it made. The advantages of such a vantage point are several: you get a bird’s eye view of the surroundings, usually above you is a vast expanse of open sky across which (early) birds will commute, and sometimes you can get a top down view of them as they fly below you. Also, usually you can carry your cup of tea up with you. And if you have regular access to such a place you can get to know your avian neighbours probably better than you do your human ones. Ah, but there is one thing you’ve got to be careful about: hanging around on the terrace or roof with binoculars is open to interpretation as regards what kind of birds you are actually watching…
Up on a friend’s terrace recently I first made my acquaintance with the colonies of plum-headed parakeets that have been long-term residents of this neighbourhood. They’d swoop down with their delightful “tooi-tooi?” queries, and hang upside down from the cable wires. A pair were courting seriously and having a property dispute with a pair of brahminy starlings with regards to a hole-in-the-wall apartment they both claimed. The brahminy starlings in their tan and fawn outfits were a better match with the apartment’s sandstone decor, but the parakeets were having none of it.
Rush hour
This was also the time when Delhi was playing host to large flocks of rosy starlings, in transit to their summering grounds abroad. Swarms of the pink and black birds would swirl across the skies, circle and then vanish into the big brooding peepuls, which they would ravage savagely, sounding like a hyperactive convention of rusty door hinges. Peepuls and banyans in fig provided a breakfast of champions for the likes of green pigeons, clambering clumsily through the branches, and grey hornbills with their quaint antiquity and soft eyes. The brown-headed barbets would begin extolling the virtues of summer, while from the flagpole of a distant building, a magpie robin stood up very straight and gave a mellifluous concert. Black kites winged past laconically, and you could literally stare them in the eye and admire the deft flicks of their tails with which they corrected course. A careful scanning of distant trees revealed a shikra, a little bedraggled this morning, but haughty and statuesque in posture, no doubt eyeing the goings-on with the intention of sudden ambush. Across the lightening sky a flock of six spot-billed ducks circled hurriedly, before heading east towards the river, while high above, six pearly egrets flew with all the languid grace of their kind.
Even the flower pots on the terrace attracted custom: a pair of solemn white-eyes, fought furiously if briefly over possession of one — frankly they look more like bespectacled scholars than thugs — and a purple sunbird showed off its spangles and sequins in the clear morning light, tweeting loudly to attract attention. For anyone wanting to start off birding, there really could be no better and more convenient location, at least to get to know the locals. And if you keep this up over a period of time and make notes, you will see that like us, birds too have their itineraries and timetables, which they follow assiduously. I normally don’t make lists or take roll calls, but this morning did, and notched up 25 species in the space of an hour. Which, I guess, is something you can shout from the rooftops about.
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