Day 14 - Bulbuls on our balcony!

Sometimes in the quiet stillness of midday, interesting birding things happen on our balcony. 

Red vented bulbuls (Pycnonotus cafer) - two of them - showed up.  Quietly.  No usual chirps and calls.  

I only noticed them because of the flitting shadows across the windows behind me.  Usually I hear the birdies before I see them.  

These two looked fatigued and thirsty, I thought, with open mouths and dull behaviour - there was water in the pots, they were not drinking though. Not foraging.  One looked thoughtful, sitting on a branch. Square, charcoal head, scaly chocolate-brown body and red vent.

The other sat looking though the closed window - I wondered was he/she looking at his/her reflection?  Or looking longingly at the insides of our flat?  Were they looking for some place cool?

Or were they looking for a nesting spot?  They nest between June and September, so this was a possibility.

I watched them through the curtains, and the pictures are through the glass, taken like a true furtive spy.  Alas, one over eager curtain move, and my cover was blown.  The bulbuls were off in the blink.

Day 13 - Full moon!

10th July

Kamini's birthday and it is full moon.

Moon rise time was 6:28pm. 

7pm and it was up and visible from our balcony. The clouds and the teak tree created magical plays of light and shadow. 

It was a breezy evening, unlike the stillness of previous evenings. 

Two bats flew by silently, a few crows called. In the distance a koel sang. Human sounds  plenty - cars honked and bikes purred past. A TV played in a neighbour’s and a mixie whirred in another. 

The Sony camera and Sekar led to this beautiful picture.

9pm and the clouds continued to veil the Buddha Purnima moon. 

A moth visited and rested on the window frame.  Is it Traminda mundissima?

Day 12 - Hibiscus

 July 9th 2025

My hibiscus plant is ten years old I just realised! In my early pictures, the leaves were a much darker green than they are now.  

 

 

 

There are many hybrids these days, but I still like this simple red one.   Sometimes i cut a stem and flower and put it in a vase, and it lives a little longer than the one day.  I have seen sunbirds and butterflies nectaring on this hibiscus.  Tailorbirds go up and down the stems, and in the soil looking for small insects.

This sun-loving low maintenance plant suits me very well.  In the early days, the stems would get aphids.  I just snipped off the paticular stem, and it seems that the plant has become resistant to aphids these last few years.

The petals are sometimes together and sometimes apart, it is quite fascinating.  Each days they look a bit different.

Georgia O Keefe, the American artist painted them - Hibiscus with Plumeria, 1939, Suposedly she was commisioned by the pineapple company Dole to go off to Hawaii and draw them a pineapple, and Ms O Keefe enjoyed her all-expense paid trip - painting, the waterfalls, and gorges and various tropical fauna including this painting, but no pineapple!  Dole finally brought a fruit to her studio and she drew one, reluctantly!  More details here:  

 And then there is Andy Warhol who had a series called Flowers.  He took inspiration from Patricia Caulfield's photograph of hibiscuses, and rendered them into a silkscreen  print - and got sued for his troubles.  What an interesting story.  

 Closer to home, Ravi Verma's paintings quite often had hibiscus - either adorning on of of the female heroines or in the garden around.

My hibiscus sketch of today.  It made me notiec the way the petails overlapped, the fine frilly edges That i could not capture, the fine veins on the petals and the strong stamen spike.

 

11th July!

What a blaze today!! Eleven blooms ( a few hidden in this picture) - apropos nothing except a full moon night.