86 The Birds in my Garden
I was sitting quietly on my verandah one day feeling at one with the peace and harmony that reigned throughout the garden, when there was a great flurry of wings and a crow landed just in front of me, quickly followed by a black drongo who dive-bombed at him, then swooped up into the air a few feet and like a trapeze artiste he suddenly changed direction and took another plunge at the crow, angrily scolding him as he did so, before flying over the trees back I should think, to his nest and the eggs or young ones he was evidently defending.
The crow meanwhile with an air of innocence about him that belied his hasty appearance waddled up to the step and gave me a look that said: well, I’m here, now feed me. It may sound anthropomorphic, but nothing could be further from the truth, for this particular crow is an old friend and we understand each other very well. This look and its meaning were established some time after I had taken to putting out rice and seed for the birds who visit this garden. One day when there was nothing out and I was sitting negligently in my wicker-chair, the crow landed and finding nothing about came up to the verandah looking me full in the eye, and when I still didn’t respond he took to attacking my flowers, uprooting them one by one! I hurried to see if there were any scraps around so as to pacify my friend before he did any more damage. Later I took care to keep a supply of peanuts nearby so as to respond to the demands of hunger. Today therefore when he gave me the eye I readily threw him a handful of peanuts which he greedily eat up before flying away satisfied.
The common babblers we have here seem to be a rather distinctive race. In colouration they are different from others I am familiar with in that they have an almost pure white cap on their heads. Their social structure is also evidently looser from what I’ve come across before. Normally they are seen in packs of seven, hence their common name as Seven Sisters, but we have two groups who frequent this garden, one of four birds and the other of nine! In fact, by rights this garden belongs to the first group, and the second only occasionally trespass when they overshoot their boundary for whatever reason thereby causing in the process a storm of protest on the part of the smaller group. I waited a long time to see if their numbers would equalise at the normal amount, or if the numbers would in some other way be made up, but it never happened.
It appears that there is a white-breasted kingfisher who more or less lives here, spending the night roosting in the bodhi tree, and the day hunting for lizards, grasshoppers, and other delicacies in and around the garden. Of all the kingfishers I’ve seen this is the only one who can happily live away from water, though he’s had to develop a rather different hunting technique in order to survive, landing suddenly on the ground and snapping up his prey before returning to a tree where he smashes the life out of his victim by slapping his vice-like beak against a branch. During the time I was here I saw only one new bird, and that was the large grey babbler who makes his living on the cultivated fields by day, and comes to roost in the nearby trees in the evening. Like his common cousin he is a very sociable bird and they are usually seen in groups of about twenty which are very noisy and argumentative.
I put in a bird bath when I first arrived here but only the crows made any real use of it, coming to drink from the fresh water supply, which must have been some relief towards the end of the dry season, and just before I left the babblers started to use it as it was originally intended. Still, other creatures around the garden also made use of it, noticeably squirrels and lizards during the day, and a large toad at night.
Moving, moving, onward moving,
life, like a river, comes and goes;
like the swallow, never resting,
life forever on it flows.
Life moves on without direction,
without self-seeking or control,
hither, thither, and wherever
the wind is blowing it’s there I go.
So now I pray and I have faith
life knows where I’m heading, and what for,
guides me, helps me, ne’er forsakes me,
until I reach the further shore.