Birds, breeze, bats

a perfect Kathmandu evening

I’m on the roof hanging laundry when I hear them chattering in the north: a wave of green, one group and then another. I feel grateful to have caught the main flock returning for the night: between work and just plain being tired I’ve missed this.

It’s cool up here, too; a welcome relief from inside, which resembles a warming oven.

These have been some hot days, about as hot as it gets in Kathmandu. Every day, if you check it early enough, the weather app promises rain—70%, 80%, this morning it was 100%—and again and again it fails to materialize. By evening it’s “Did we say today? Ha! We meant tomorrow!” We’re all waiting for it. This afternoon K— told me the rain will come on Friday, and as this is her city and she should know I’m taking her word for it and counting on some relief then.

A few bright green stragglers bring up the rear; I still don’t know if they’re rose-ringed parakeets or slaty-headed ones—they swing by so quickly and the trees they roost in are too far to see them up close. I must remember to ask someone who knows more about birds than I do. My usual bird identification method—take a picture, zoom in, compare to one of my bird books—doesn’t work on parakeets; my photography skills aren’t quite up to their speedy fly-bys. They literally embody blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.

It’s still light out but there’s a tiny crescent moon above me as I write this on the balcony, relishing the breeze. Marv, sprawled on the cool marble chip floor, has the right idea.

A lone cattle egret off its usual flight path passes high over me, heading north, swimming against the avian tide. To the west, above the trees, the kites circle on the air currents as the sky goes gently pink.

I wait until I see the first unmistakable fruit bat, black against the hazy blue of the slowly darkening sky, and then head in. The nocturnal mosquitoes won’t be far behind, and even though they’re not as dangerous as the stripey one I dispatched as it tried to munch on my leg this morning, I’d rather not be dinner.