Birdwatching

Recently my 8-year-old Qais watched The Big Year- a movie about bird enthusiasts gone wild- and has now decided that he wants to start his own “big year”, minus the competition of course. So we spent the best part of yesterday afternoon slinking around the garden, cameras in hand. It was quite a novel experience for me, never having been a birdwatcher.

The prettiest of the birds we saw was the male purple sunbird. According to Qais it sounds like “cheewit, cheewit, cheewit.” We also saw many common mynahs, apparently considered a nuisance in parts of Australia. I rather like the variety of calls it makes.

Our house is quite a nesting ground for another “nuisance”- the blue rock pigeon- but bird-poo notwithstanding, I rather like their cooing sounds.In one of the flower beds we found half a pigeon egg- empty. I hope the little birdie had hatched and not been devoured by a kite!

Of course there is no end to house crows in Karachi, but in our house at least they tend to prefer the power cables to the garden. We also briefly spotted a few rather skittish tailorbirds, who prefer to hang out in the patio at the back, near the orchids. And we had many viewings of the common, but delightfully so, sparrows.

Also caught sight of a few yellow-vented bulbuls. To my mind these sound the sweetest!

We managed to hear the occasional koel call, which seems appropriate given that the mango trees are in bloom, but didn’t see any. I think we will have to stalk the neighbour’s mango tree at a later date. And we did see one ring-collared dove or fakhta. Not bad for an afternoon’s fun! I have this amazing memory of our first week in our home. It was the middle of the night and Biscotti started barking incessantly- usually he sleep through the night. So I remember walking out to see what was bothering him and to get him to shut up before the kids woke up, and I saw him barking at the balcony. Of course I had stepped out without my glasses, so thought he was barking at a cat perched on the balcony railing. Imagine my surprise when the “cat” spread its wings and flew off into the trees. It was then that I realized I had just seen my first owl in Karachi- and then I knew this home would be good for us. And clearly for some other creatures too- here's a snap of a sparrow nest we discovered in the plumbing!