Love this song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ( Rolling Stones)

She comes in colors everywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

She comes in colors everywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

Have you seen her dressed in blue
See the sky in front of you
And her face is like a sail
Speck of white so fair and pale
Have you seen the lady fairer

She comes in colors everywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

Have you seen her all in gold
Like a queen in days of old
She shoots colors all around
Like a sunset going down
Have you seen the lady fairer

She comes in colors everywhere;
She combs her hair
She’s like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

She’s like a rainbow
Coming colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors

.

Not being savvy enough to have the net on my mobile, I am sitting in a seedy internet parlour in Guwahati, having gorged on momos for lunch....had a lovely day visiting Dakshineswar in Kolkata yesterday...will be out of touch for the next two weeks as I visit Dibru-Shaikowa and Namdapha...back on the 31st.

I do'nt have the time to visit my friend's pages, so I hope all of you are doing fine...

And here's wishing many of you a very Merry Christmas in advance, if I don't get to a computer again!

Bushchat – the newsletter of NCF

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[1] Anderson, R.C. 2009. Do dragonflies migrate across the western Indian Ocean? Journal of Tropical Ecology 25(4): 347-348
[2] MigrantWatch Blog: Riding the wind between continents: the epic migration of dragonflies
[3] TED talk

.

Location of the sighting: Central range, Kaziranga National Park ( map )

A female Kalij Pheasant just ran across the trail and I was feeling bad that I didn’t get to see this bird properly. But out driver ensured that a male would follow it shortly. And after waiting for a while, a male Kalij Pheasant appeared on the trail. It looked around and quickly headed to the other side of the road where the female just went in.

Kalij Pheasants are generally forest dwelling birds and are found in the foothills of the Himalayas and there are various sub-species too. They are omnivorous eating almost anything from bamboo seeds to small snakes and lizards.

Original Entry

Karthik called me and told me that since I had made a record sighting of the

BLACK STORK

must be properly documented in the form of a scientific paper.

I am coping with power outage (and resultant internet non-access), the packing for a 15 day trip, and a houseguest tomorrow....and how on EARTH does an L-board birder produce a scientific paper, and that too, out of a two-minute sighting that she was fortunate enough to document!?

Oh, I will do it...with the help of several friends....and by BTMNO...Burning The Mid Night Oil! :)

Here are two views of the

RED-VENTED BULBUL






and this one's not eating breakfast:





The burbling, fluting call of the bulbuls can be heard all over the countryside, and we actually have two

RED-WHISKERED BULBULS





trying to build a nest in our lawn...unsuccessfully, as the foliage is not heavy enough!

Did a short birding trip to Gulakamale lake ( map ) this morning. Spot-billed Pelicans and Oriental Honey Buzzards ( 3 of them) were the highlights. The buzzard kept hovering.

White-rumped Munia feeding on Ragi

River Tern

Oriental Honey Buzzard

Pied Bushchat

Oriental Honey Buzzard landing

Original Entry

We started our day at 7am for the Safari. Our guide cum driver Konwar suggested that we start with the Central range of Kaziranga National Park. The sun rises by 5am and by 7am the light is very bright. A sighting of the Oriental Pied-hornbill in flight had already given us our first sighting for the day. But to be very honest, I fell for the landscape of Kaziranga. Dry fields, grasslands with wooded areas in patches, water bodies with reeds all over makes it simply beautiful. It is the Flooded Grassland habitat for most part of the Central range because it is heavily flooded by the Brahmaputra river during the Monsoons. I keep wondering how the people of Kaziranga manage to live through floods year after year. Konwar said that it is that part of the year where the wildlife is seen on the highway because the national park is flooded and the forest guards gaurd the wildlife on the road. It is amazing how everybody faces it and get back to their normal life in the winter… ( to be continued)

Original Entry

I think I am the happiest and probably the luckiest person in the world. I have general good health (forget the occasional blips...everyone has them), great family, wonderful friends, the ability to be comfortable with who I am, and what I can achieve, the ability to learn (albeit, very slowly), I like people and am perennially interested in them....all this is incredibly good fortune...yes, I do have a fortune in my mind and heart...and it may long after Thanksgiving, but I do give thanks.

On the Chennai Photowalk, I found this beggar, whose crutches need crutches...



Now, would I call him lucky or not? Believe me, he was grinning at all the photographers, who all pressed money upon him... perhaps this appearance is his stock-in-trade, to help get photographers get their "artistic" and "ethnic" this-is-India shots!

Off to the Zoo area to have a nice little ramble....

I walk with dragging feet (and my infected molars and gums) into the large hall where several chairs are placed, and approach the nearest white coat diffidently, with my dental records card. I am hoping that this person will say, "No, we can't see you now," and I can go home in peace.

No such luck. I am in the unfortunate position of the patient in the hospital, who was asked by his doctor, "You want the good news first or the bad news?" When he said he wanted the good news, the doctor beamed, "Well, we are naming the disease after you."

"Oh yes, Mrs M," beams the dentist, showing a perfect set of pearly teeth that surely no other dentist has laid hands on. "We've been expecting you. The students are waiting."

No, thankfully, the students are not here to take turns at trying their budding skills on my molars.

They are here because I am a referral patient; that is, my case is interesting enough to be made a case study of. This means (on the good side) that my treatment cost is incredibly low.

(  ...but the bad side.... )


When the root-canal botching happened the first time, a few years ago, I gave myself the Blogger username of molarbear...the molar making me as angry as a bear....alas, that name is still apt!

Today I was told that the sighting of the Black Stork, that I posted about

here

was a first for Bangalore! What a thrill that was!

This is not a thrill that the experienced birder will understand. S/he is probably used to making rare sightings and first records all the time...but for an L-board, the thrill of having made a record sighting is quite high....

It's the same in our monthly family quiz group. When, at my most ignorant, I stumble upon the right answer, my happiness in doing so (and gaining all of 2 or 5 points for my team) is far greater than the greatest Mastermind champion could experience, sitting in that black chair answering questions on, say, "The Use of the Semicolon in Shakespeare" or some such chosen subject!

So let me savour the moment, all too soon, it will be gone....

And a word of gratitude here to Karthik, who is a great guide..he points out the direction and lets one arrive at the destination by oneself.

Since I was able to go birding to Bheemannakuppe kere on Saturday, and to the Ragihalli sheet rock/pond area on Sunday, I'd better combine the two for my field report...


My trip to Bheemannakuppe kerE (kerE means, lake or pond in Kannada) on Saturday was with Abhisheka Gopal, Anjali Anantharam, S R Gopalan, Girish Mayachari, Harsha Joshi, Sangeetha Kadur, and Suma.... and the group on Sunday, to Ragihalli, consisted of a member of the Madras Naturalists' Society, Padmanabhan, and his friends Sandhya, visiting from New York, and Kavita and Rajesh from Bangalore. The last three were coming out birding for the very first time!

One raptor that we saw on both days was the

ORIENTAL HONEY BUZZARD :



( birds at both locations )

I leave you with this colourful scene of the

WHITE-BREASTED KINGFISHER

at Ragihalli kere, adding its dash of blue to the greenery, and the white and pink of the lantanas and waterlilies:

Yes, I am getting to the birds, but yesterday's tooth extraction was particulary bad. My wisdom tooth had an extra root, which apparently curved deep into the jawbone...it took 45 minutes to extract it, and yesterday evening was one of the most ghastly I have spent so far....

But today I am feeling better, and let me first share the insects and other Life-Under-Foot photographs...


The trip to Bheemannakuppe was a learning process about

BAGWORM MOTHS


I had made

this post

which included a photo of the

EVERGREEN BAGWORM

That had been infesting a tree in my daughter's garden,

but in Bheemannakuppe,

Sangeetha Kadur

showed us a couple of more varieties....





Look athe beauty of the wildflower on which the case rests!


( the bagworms and other creatures )






Well, we did see lots more, but that's all the Life-Under-Foot that I caught on camera! :)

There's no one to take photographs of The Biddles regularly now....or to take videos....

I survive in one city, generally, by putting out of my mind all that I enjoy in the other. But yesterday, I saw a little baby just about the age of GD, with chubby, dimpled little hands and legs...and missed my GD so intensely for a minute...

So, here she is, on the day I left St.Louis...just LOOK at that expression!





She hasn't still learnt to crawl or to sit up, and on Skype, it's very funny, when her parents sit her up, to see her falling like the doll that she is!

Oh my, when I get a forward...I seem to get it from ALL directions. (right now, for some reason, it's Shashi Tharoor's speech at TED Mysore.)

On one of the egroups that I moderate, people forward jokes and aphorisms and those icky-chweet stories...that others on the egroup have forwarded earlier. I guess some people only like *sending* forwards, not reading them!

I *hate* getting forwards with those HUGE chunks of emails at the beginning...

And those anti-someone-or-the-other email forwards...

Or those forwards which are false (like the Tommy Hilfiger apartheid one, or the one about someone giving you an injection and leaving you in a tub full of ice while they make off with your kidney/s) but are STILL circulating.

And I want to know....WHY do all the jokes have to be in such OE (Orrible English)? No, not ethnic Indian English, but really LOUSY language with ghastly spellings, so that I don't know whether to laugh at the joke or the language.

But most of all I detest the do-this-AND-forward this to 89,975 people by tomorrow or your eyelashes will fall out forwards...and the yucky-saccharin "if you like me send this back to me!" forwards. i don't WANT tweety little birds and cutesy little doggies with messages under them....

But...for every 100 forwards I get...I do forward one...because I like it!

The latest forward? One about a sari that cost Rs. 40 lakhs....

We had done some birding at the Ragihalli sheet rock area and had come into Ragihalli village, to visit the pond. (yes, yes, I *will* post the actual birds-and-other creatures pics soon.)

I wanted a hot cup of chai, so we stopped at my usual lady's shop, said hi to the lady, her grand-daughter and a neighbour's kid called Monica, and had chai and biscuits (in keeping with its being a nature expedition, I bought...Tiger biscuits!) and while we were munching and sipping, I looked into the house opposite...and caught this lovely vignette.




I don't know if the photograph is clear enough...but it shows one woman ready to comb out and plait another's hair.

This habit of sitting for a relaxed few minutes while someone else combs out and plaits your hair seems to have all but disappeared in today's fast-paced world...I instantly thought back to the days when I had hair that I could sit on. (Really. I have a photograph to prove it.)

My mother would sit me down in front of her and the part I totally hated was that she would pour on the hair oil (coconut oil). I always detested the greasy mess it made of my hair...and I think my life-long preference for very short hair stems from this dislike.

But...it was very relaxing to have her gently comb out my hair (except for the odd "ouch" when the comb got caught in a tangle)...and there was one style of plaiting, called, in Tamizh, "kodalai pinnal", which was very much admired by my Bengali friends. (Alas, it would be done only when I'd had an "oil bath" and needed to get my hair dry.) There were also plaits with 5 strands rather than the usual 3, and the French plaits..and when I had two plaits, I had "Y" plaits where the two plaits would be joined together, and a "W" plait where that "Y" was looped back and tied to the top of one plait with a ribbon...and of course the regular two-folded plaits as my hair was too long, even plaited, to be let to hang down.

The difficulty, of course, was that it was my mother who would decide how much of oil would go into my hair, and what style of plait I would have....and I actually treasured the moment when she started letting me plait my own hair. To me, it was one of the signs of growing up...how little I knew of adulthood, to think that plaiting my own hair was entry into this state!

Loose hair was totally looked down upon. "parattai thalai" (unkempt hair) was the very epitome of bad grooming! It was a well-knnow fact that Bengali women and girls let their hair loose, and the words "parattai thalai" was often amended to "parattai thalaiyum, bangALa vEshamum" (unkempt hair, with the looks of a Bengali).

No loose plaits were allowed, either. The hair was tightly scraped back and tied into tight, severe plaits....and finished off with ribbons. T

The ribbons would get greasy, too, and had to be washed. I had to come for "thalai pinnal" ..plaiting the hair...with a large-toothed comb to detangle it, a fine-toothed comb to give the final neat appearance, and ribbons that matched my clothes.

What I loved about others' caring for my hair was, visits to Chennai to my grandmother's house, where the maid would oil my hair thoroughly every Friday, and wash it out beautifully with hot water and shikAkAi powder (soapnut powder).

Then my hair would be spread over a basket set over a mud vessel in which "sAmbrANi" (a kind of resin, I think) would be smoked...the hair would dry and get the delicate smell of the sAmbrANi

And after that, my hair would be silky and smooth and fragrant and would frame my face...and for those few hours (until the next morning's oiling and plaiting!) it was worth it to have long hair!

Yesterday I was chatting with my friend

Chandu

as he and Ramesh were supposed to come birding with me. He said, "Ramesh can't come as his wife has gone out and he has to take care of the maid."

"Oh," I said, "I understand. Yesterday, someone I went birding with had to run home to catch the cook."

...then we both just broke up laughing!

I saw, on the bngbirds egroup, that someone called

R. Padmanabhan, a doctoral student at IIT Madras

....who belongs to the Madras Naturalist Society, had asked if anyone could go birding with him to the Bannerghatta Forest area. To me, this is like someone asking if I want chocolate. I promptly emailed him, and this morning, he came with three friends of his who were going for the first time. (Of them, it turned out that Sandhya was my daughter's junior at Sacred Hearts School, and has been reading my blog.)

Yesterday at Bheemannakuppe was FRY day not Saturday, as the temperature was uncomfortably hot...so, naturally, today was chilly and it was so misty that it took quite an hour or so before the birds on the Ragihalli route even woke up!

So while I was waiting....I took the birders:





The sun was in bed, too, on a fine mattress of mist:




It was rather reluctant to come out:





And even when it did, it had fine veils of mist over it, like a shy woman covering her modesty with filmy cloth :





Mist may make for lousy bird photography...but the scenery does make me misty-eyed!

The

BLACK-WINGED KITE

(earlier called the Black-Shouldered Kite, which I think is more accurate)

is easily one of the most handsome common accipiters in the Bangalore outskirts....

You can see the black shoulders clearly as it lands on the insulators of the power cables:





( this kite flies itself )


But back it came, to land on the wire again:




More photos from our Bheemanna Kuppe Kere trip (thank you Sangeetha!) on Saturday....coming up as soon as I can upload them...! We were 4 NTP members in a group of 7.