I'm thinking about all the years of my childhood and realizing that no friend or family ever pointed out an interesting bird in the wild. I have seen a few exotic things at zoos, but do not ever recall walking from my house and being face-to-face with an exotic bird. There used to be paddy fields next to our high-rise building in Hyderabad and there were two or three trees that had interesting nest by weaver-birds, and I still remember seeing one deep blue Kingfisher in grade four while riding my school bus. I guess in the places I grew up in India, urban Hyderabad and semi-urban Ranchi, "development" and the concomitant construction of houses ensured the birds were pushed out of the concrete jungle and out of my world.
Even here in West Lafayette, Indiana, more and more of the land is being consumed. Just today I heard on the news about some million-dollar property in the city limits being sold by the city to a robotics company for a dollar to set up a factory.
Sonya and I have been taking in the sun early in the morning each day, leashed to our four-legged squirrel-hunting leader, MB. Each day so far has been peppered with magical visits from exotic birds. While in Tennessee, I had been told by R that the bluebirds she had seen had blue feathers on the top and an orange and white belly. We saw one today in the most unlikely of places. On our usual walk, after crossing the Lindburgh Bridge spanning the Celery Bog wetland, we take a right and walk through the trails along the west shore of the wetland. Today we decided to head left along the bike path towards campus. The path initially separates the Purdue golf course to the left and suburban houses to the right. Half a mile later, the houses and lawns are replaced by a huge field which is mono-cropped with uniformly machine-planted grids of corn. On the left we still had the golf course which was being mowed at multiple places by noisy, strange human-topped machines and quieter Canada Geese flocks. A far cry from the wetland bordered by a wood if we had mad a right turn.
I went down on my knees to take a photograph of a dwarfed and diseased corn baby, which was being roasted by the bright golden sun surrounded by an army of brawny foot-and-a-half long corn soldiers. Sonya and MB walked on. When I stood up, there were a pair of bluebirds on the little tree that somebody had planted to supplement the grass on the golf course and the green corn. The bluebirds were not the slender bluebirds with longer beaks we had seen in Glenwood Springs, CO or the bluebird with the homologous shape in the Wapanocca Reserve in Arkansas. These were indigo blue on top contrasted with the light blue sky, and orange and white below. These were the bluebirds R had seen in Tennessee. These little sparrow-sized bluebirds examined me with their sclera-free black eyes. I took their pictures from less than six feet away. I heard a bird cry to my left and tilted my head in that direction. A Red-Wing Blackbird was chasing a Starling and the pair were headed towards us. The two bluebirds dove into the army of green and the moment of magic was over.
Even here in West Lafayette, Indiana, more and more of the land is being consumed. Just today I heard on the news about some million-dollar property in the city limits being sold by the city to a robotics company for a dollar to set up a factory.
Sonya and I have been taking in the sun early in the morning each day, leashed to our four-legged squirrel-hunting leader, MB. Each day so far has been peppered with magical visits from exotic birds. While in Tennessee, I had been told by R that the bluebirds she had seen had blue feathers on the top and an orange and white belly. We saw one today in the most unlikely of places. On our usual walk, after crossing the Lindburgh Bridge spanning the Celery Bog wetland, we take a right and walk through the trails along the west shore of the wetland. Today we decided to head left along the bike path towards campus. The path initially separates the Purdue golf course to the left and suburban houses to the right. Half a mile later, the houses and lawns are replaced by a huge field which is mono-cropped with uniformly machine-planted grids of corn. On the left we still had the golf course which was being mowed at multiple places by noisy, strange human-topped machines and quieter Canada Geese flocks. A far cry from the wetland bordered by a wood if we had mad a right turn.
I went down on my knees to take a photograph of a dwarfed and diseased corn baby, which was being roasted by the bright golden sun surrounded by an army of brawny foot-and-a-half long corn soldiers. Sonya and MB walked on. When I stood up, there were a pair of bluebirds on the little tree that somebody had planted to supplement the grass on the golf course and the green corn. The bluebirds were not the slender bluebirds with longer beaks we had seen in Glenwood Springs, CO or the bluebird with the homologous shape in the Wapanocca Reserve in Arkansas. These were indigo blue on top contrasted with the light blue sky, and orange and white below. These were the bluebirds R had seen in Tennessee. These little sparrow-sized bluebirds examined me with their sclera-free black eyes. I took their pictures from less than six feet away. I heard a bird cry to my left and tilted my head in that direction. A Red-Wing Blackbird was chasing a Starling and the pair were headed towards us. The two bluebirds dove into the army of green and the moment of magic was over.
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