Basic Birding

Last time when I went birdwatching I noticed a contradicting fly that would be bisexual, its front had green of a dragonfly but the rest was the blue of a damselfly. Audubon's collection had a guide to the flies and found it to be a common green darner.
Scapular.

Spindling cliff swallows

Cormorants would fly in batches, reel around an island of trees, dive into the water and flow with the currents.
Many of them leave flaps of water in their wake.
Today while looking at a picture of a gliding hawk, horizontal view, I was reminded of the extended 'r's we would use to denote birds in sketches.
A faint look at Sora.
Saw a hawk's claw, real pointy edges.

Bird off the wire

Glass conspires to fly
Another time I saw this, I could just walk into the balcony and collect the feathers. Now sealed in a small ziploc which comes with an extra set of buttons in it. Then the feathers were of hummingbird, too small to picture.
This happened with a thud. I gathered my senses to call help if I needed to handle a miscreant. When I saw the feathers sticking I looked down to the ground and found a beautiful bird lying.
Bubbles Most life is christened when they are born but not so with this messenger from skies.
I looked for any prints on the glass like we were showed at an Audubon centre. The dove must have fared worse. And what of the hummingbird?

Into the Amazon

This essay by Charles Waterton is about birds of Amazon

Henry Seebohm's essay on birds in Siberia. Access to more of his books

Grant Allen's essay Prophetic Autumn can be read from his book Moorland Idylls

Encantadas by Herman Melville.

Interesting magazine collection.

Rachel Carson's work

Ernest Thompson Seton's essay The Wild Geese of Wyndygoul' from his book Wild Animal Ways

Richard Jeffries work

Already praised work of Edmund Selous

Find W H Hudson, Maurice Maeterlinck and others work

Teddy Roosevelts African game trails

Why birds Sing

This essay included in the 'By the Light of the Glow Worm Lamp' from Jacques Delamain (his 1931 book) is best read accompanied with the songs of the birds being talked about.
Serins, Cirl Bunting, Chaffinches, Mistle Thrush, Cetti's Warbler, Ortolan

Plovers

In Edmund Selous essay 'Birdwatching' included in 'By the Light of the Glow-worm Lamp', the author has a descriptive account of stone-curlew. It is the longest, captivating reading about watching birds. Wiki says the term for the activity took off with a book of Selous by the same name.
I can imagine the curlew going after a thistle- down. When he talks of dance, by thinking of it without music, one can see it in just the movements too. From the pattern we move to the unit actions that make it up.
Looking at a video of a plover flying, I had to be informed that plovers can fly too. For the little time I take to recognise these little shore birds, they walk around detecting food with their bills, it does not occur to me that they can fly. Given that they migrate, I have to believe it.
I have seen the stilts fly, but none of all the busy feeding shore birds. Maybe I should shadow them to learn all they can do. Then it would have to be done in different months too.

Watching Birds

My motivation in reading this book by Roger E Pasquier is a sketch of different shore birds with varying bill lengths searching for food in water. The classic 'early bird' tale has a twist. If your neighbor's bill is not the same size as yours, you can sleep longer. Your foraging zones are different.

Journals from SoraLook for Birding mag

By the Light of the Glow-Worm lamp

What is needed is to write the lives of our birds so that the creatures may be recognized without the aid of an illustrartion.

Charles C Abbot in essay 'An October Diary'

The Nature of Nature

This book with essay 'Gujarat and Rajasthan' by Peter Matthiesen I learnt of birds like sarus(saras) crane godavan(bustard), Luggar falcons and trees like mahua, khejri.
oriental birds

Reading of the salt impregnated in Koli salt miners that dont burn, I just wish they had the adaptation of flamingos long legs to save their feathers from the salt from water( Extreme birds )

Casques of cassowaries and hornbills

A book cover of an egg color

bombax's red

Demoiselle cranes

Why madagascar does not have woodpeckers?

Painted stork
OPen bill stork
black neck crane
greylags
pacas


clusia tree

Bird watching and Mind

Two fridays ago, I had gone for an early and quick bird watching. The attention grabber that day was an Osprey. That capital O is a new development. They have become the pronouns for me now. Osprey thrilled us with his tour. Later he rested on a tree. As we scanned to the left, there was a hunk of a bird on a dead tree. I dismissed it as the same bird. Later when a cowatcher found it, she wondered how could anyone miss it and I realised how mindlessly I snubbed the Red tailed hawk as Osprey, clearly when osprey has such contrasting black and white in it. As I followed a phoebe from a tree to a bank, I was surprised to call it and wondered how does our memory work and when are we sure of the bird.
Last sunday sitting in a class with glass windows, we looked out to find a bird. After looking at its ID, I wondered if it was a shrike but didnt say it loud as I thought the others around would have called it if it was that. It is ironic that few weeks ago, it was the same marks that I carried home and checked it out in the bird book that it was a shrike.