halftwo
Wird Batcher
Fragrant frangipani blossoms waft across lilly ponds where Chinese pond herons, almost tame, stalk tiddlers on marble corridors. The Magpie robin swoops down on a singing cicada as night falls. A waning moon - soon to signal in the Chinese New Year - rises in a cloudless sky. I wait for dawn.
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Inky pre-dawn and the chorus has already begun - Koels call their name and answer each other across the garden. The stars fade as a hint of light out east blooms ever brighter. Unable to sleep I tread the dewy lawns.
Dawn: an unseen Indian nightjar sings its accelerated chucking notes somewhere close. I approach. Suddenly it launches itself from the track onto some mothy prey and resettles to sing again. But before proper light it has hidden away.
Dry grasses have ripened and browned - my winter bare legs receive their first scratches as I push through scrubby land. Prinias are calling but stubbornly refuse to show. Black drongos are coming in from roosting to perch prominently on every treetop, electric wire and lamp-post. They squabble and chatter.
But closer-to a series of "tacks" from a most elusive bird - several birds in fact - remain sounds only: even the prinias are showing a little now - Plain and Rufescents both in the weeds. It would be the third day before I got a glimpse of this most skulking of birds.
In the copse the Collared scops owl is still where I'd left it two years ago when last I came here, and this time I get better views. But even better - something perched at the top of a tree - obviously cuckoo-shaped.
The grey head and orangy belly of a Plaintive cuckoo!
Hoopoes are commoner this year and several are showing their crests and calling - Greater coucals responding with several more similar "hoo hoo hoos".
A burst of golf-ball-sized gamebirds from underfoot and a whirr of wings from Barred buttonquails skims them briefly a few feet back to cover. Brown shrikes protest my intrusion. A Black-capped kingfisher in the plantation even more gaudy than the Indian rollers and Green bee-eaters all around. A Coppersmith barbet begins to strike the morning anvil monotonously - his mate sidles up beside him as they show their colours in the now risen sun.
Time to wake Mrs.H and go for breakfast - where we watch pink dolphins play offshore across the surface of the swimming pool, as Swallows head north along the beach. These, it transpired were not Irrawaddy dolphins as someone at the hotel said, but Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins - and it wasn't the jetlag - they really are pink!
Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight
Lead me out on the moonlit floor
Inky pre-dawn and the chorus has already begun - Koels call their name and answer each other across the garden. The stars fade as a hint of light out east blooms ever brighter. Unable to sleep I tread the dewy lawns.
Dawn: an unseen Indian nightjar sings its accelerated chucking notes somewhere close. I approach. Suddenly it launches itself from the track onto some mothy prey and resettles to sing again. But before proper light it has hidden away.
Dry grasses have ripened and browned - my winter bare legs receive their first scratches as I push through scrubby land. Prinias are calling but stubbornly refuse to show. Black drongos are coming in from roosting to perch prominently on every treetop, electric wire and lamp-post. They squabble and chatter.
But closer-to a series of "tacks" from a most elusive bird - several birds in fact - remain sounds only: even the prinias are showing a little now - Plain and Rufescents both in the weeds. It would be the third day before I got a glimpse of this most skulking of birds.
In the copse the Collared scops owl is still where I'd left it two years ago when last I came here, and this time I get better views. But even better - something perched at the top of a tree - obviously cuckoo-shaped.
The grey head and orangy belly of a Plaintive cuckoo!
Hoopoes are commoner this year and several are showing their crests and calling - Greater coucals responding with several more similar "hoo hoo hoos".
A burst of golf-ball-sized gamebirds from underfoot and a whirr of wings from Barred buttonquails skims them briefly a few feet back to cover. Brown shrikes protest my intrusion. A Black-capped kingfisher in the plantation even more gaudy than the Indian rollers and Green bee-eaters all around. A Coppersmith barbet begins to strike the morning anvil monotonously - his mate sidles up beside him as they show their colours in the now risen sun.
Time to wake Mrs.H and go for breakfast - where we watch pink dolphins play offshore across the surface of the swimming pool, as Swallows head north along the beach. These, it transpired were not Irrawaddy dolphins as someone at the hotel said, but Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins - and it wasn't the jetlag - they really are pink!
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