Valley of Flowers - the state of Uttarakhand suffers

Uttarakhand tourism, power paralysed by incessant rain

My going (or not going) on the trip is a small matter. People have died.

Valley of Flowers - will the weather gods be kind?

Raji emails that there are landslides in Uttaranchal, and schools are shut until the 18th. I pretend to be blasé, oh we are only travelling after that.

I casually look up accuweather, and oh no, bad idea. The whole of next week has rain forecast fr both mornings and nights. It will be no fun if we get rained out or rained in.

My trekking shoes have settled in well, and gear is falling into place, and what a letdown if we don't go. Raji has her medicine kit all organised, Gapi has picked up a nice indexed book on flowers of the valley.

All we can do is wait and watch.

A Lemon Pansy stops by

It stopped for a while on my bathroom floor

Almost stepped on it, as I walked in the door.

Lemon pansy, did you flee from a foe?

And after a while, where did you go?

Maybe out of the bedroom window,

or protein for my house gecko?

Sunbirds

Mr Ramanan saw these sunbirds as they came seeking nectar to a male papaya tree, at Gandhigram.

As he sat watching their antics, Mr Ramanan also witnessed the resident cat stalk and kill one of a group of babblers that was feeding noisily off some grain. It caught the babbler by its wing, and just like its larger cousin the tiger, bit into the neck with its canines, bringing a swift end to the bird, and resulting in much indignant calling and cawing by the other babblers as well as the crows in the vicinity.

Male Purple-rumped sunbird. Photo by Mr Ramanan
Male Loten's sunbird, with the longer, curved beak. Photo by Mr Ramanan.

The female sunbirds are olive coloured, as seen here, as they picked up nesting material.

This was a sunbird's rather untidy nest I came across at my mother's home some months ago.

Nash and me

You Can’t Get There from Here

by Ogden Nash

Bird watchers top my honors list.
I aimed to be one, but I missed.
Since I’m both myopic and astigmatic,
My aim turned out to be erratic,
And I, bespectacled and binocular,
Exposed myself to comment jocular.

We don’t need too much birdlore, do we,
To tell a flamingo from a towhee;
Yet I cannot, and never will,
Unless the silly birds stand still.
And there’s no enlightenment in a tour
Of ornithological literature.
Is yon strange creature a common chickadee,
Or a migrant alouette from Picardy?

You can rush to consult your Nature guide
And inspect the gallery inside,
But a bird in the open never looks
Like its picture in the birdie books-
Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage,
And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.
That is why I sit here growing old by inches,
Watching a clock instead of finches,
But I sometimes visualize in my gin
The Audubon that I audubin.

Exerpted from “Up From the Egg: Confessions of a Nuthatch Avoider”

Thank you Sheila, for sending me this!

My apologies, for an adaptation I could not resist:

Bird watchers top my honors list.
I aim to be one, but this tail has a twist.
Since I’m both myopic and astigmatic,
My sightings turn out to be erratic,
And I, bespectacled and binocular,
Expose myself to comment jocular.

We don’t need too much bird IQ, I was told,
To tell a prinia from a pipit, so bold;
Yet I cannot, and never will,
Unless the silly birds sit still.
And there’s no enlightenment in a tour
Of ornithological literature.
Is yon strange creature a common ibis, black-headed
Or an uncommon black migrant in the marsh embedded?

You can rush to consult your Inskipp & Grimmett guide
And inspect the photo gallery inside,
But a bird in the open never looks
Like its picture in the birdie books-
Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage,
And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.
That is why I sit here writing ghastly verse,
Instead, I should be out looking, for better or worse,
But I sometimes visualize in my dream
The birdwatcher that I became, supreme!