a collection of ramblings
insufferable delicacy infused into the bend of knee, turn of head: a water-borne ballet, beat kept by still water, reflecting this moment then, now, forevermore. This will - finally - be the last of the birds from my trip to the Llobregat Delta in Spain, almost eight months on. (What can I say. I procrastinate.)… Continue reading Long-legged Tchaikovskys
I have a creeping suspicion treecreepers are much more interesting than their color scheme and name makes them out to be.
Today in quirky bird names, we bring you a Mallard from, you guessed it, Spain. Apparently the name is derived from Old French - from mallart, or wild drake - and also from masle, meaning male. As a female, I am slightly offended by this gendering what is, at the end of the day, a… Continue reading Mallard over Metropolis
My adventures at the Llobregat Delta continue. One of the things that fascinated me about the area was the sheer density of waterfowl - specifically, ducks and geese. Of course, I've been witness to the hundreds of shorebirds at a time at Sungei Buloh, and long-legged waders are hardly new to me - but ducks?… Continue reading Duck Days
Barcelona's Llobregat Delta proved to be a fruitful trip for me. However, birds I could identify were in a minority - which, thankfully, included this Purple Swamphen. I can now profess myself to be intimately familiar with this species, after having documented them in the Sandpit Swamphens, based on observations of them in Bangalore this… Continue reading Swamphen Days
A Blue Tit peeks out from behind blossoms, a brilliant blue sky behind. Honestly - who could resist the chubby little face?
In the Pyrenees of Spain, somehow this (unidentified) bird manages to maintain a ridiculous level of self-contained superiority while sitting on what is really a pile of horse manure.
Put it simply, I do not know European birds. Which is why I saw this one and sighed. Its vagueish eyebrow indicated its membership of that hated family: leaf warblers. A brief history - I have seen several in the Himalayas, probably some in the Western Ghats, and a total of nil have been identified.… Continue reading Birding the Chaff
Car-window glimpses – hints at something beyond the fingerprinted glass and constant humming of movement and silence in their endless dance, because you love like this – bittersweet heart-in-mouth. You cannot do anything else; no space forms for anything else in disappearing tarmac behind and knowledge of the gap between possibility and reality. In the… Continue reading Coup d’Oeil
In honor of the Monday looming upon us, here is a dog running through the fields, away from its problems (namely, the photographer pointing a scarily large lens at it for documentation purposes only), as no doubt all of us feel like/will feel like doing tomorrow morning. We encountered this lil' fellow while chasing what… Continue reading Through the Fields
somewhere up a tree 