Birds in other spaces

on sentry duty, or just giving each other the cold shoulder?

While I relish a glimpse of the occasional avian show-stopper as much as the next person, what I’ve really come to love are the quotidian birds that I see as I go through my days: keeping an eye out for them, observing, learning their habits—it’s a sort of quiet joy.

And when circumstances take me out of that daily life, as they have recently, I find myself once again drawn to the everyday birds in my new surroundings. Which are part of life here, and do I recognize any of them?

Okay so I know what that one is, it’s the same as on my roof in Kathmandu. The parakeets sound the same, but aren’t their tails just a little shorter than the ones I see every day? Are those brown shrikes or if not, what are they?

The surprise of stumbling across a field scattered with piles of dirt, brick and other debris—and dotted with red-wattled lapwings, or so I conclude, after much googling. They’re at the top of this post, and despite being abundant, I think they’re amazing.

The joy of finding this beauty perched on a sign, a brahminy starling, after its morning coffee. That two-toned beak is something special.

Without my stack of bird books to page through—I’m woefully ignorant of bird families—I find myself typing ever more varied descriptions into the search bar, poring over the resulting photos to try to find a match to mine. I never got a clear shot of the maybe-shrike, which is why I’m still unsure about that one.

And at least once a day, I catch myself wondering What bird makes that sound? only to remember, belatedly each time, that these trees are full of chipmunks.