Day 56 - rain and a bedraggled treepie

5am this morning and first the crows made a raucous chorus and then the skies opened up accompanied by thunder and lightning.  Did the crows sense something I wondered?   For an hour or so, the rain came down in buckets and we hurried to shut the open windows.  The rain seemed to have changed directions.  Odd.  A light rain spray came in from the windows  that were not getting rain so far.

As dawn broke, I watched from the windows, as our road flooded.  My immediate thoughts - oh yay, I can be lazy today, I have an excuse not to go for a walk!  Sekar comes and says aha, we do not need to water the plants!  This is like two lazy people celebrating the rain!  

As I watched the teak tree, coffee cup in hand, the rain stopped and the bird parade started.  A parakeet first, looking morose and giving indignant squawks and shaking itself.  A Myna too came and perched itself.  A bulbul chirped, sat, gave a shake and then off it went.  

One bird was hidden behind the branches until the parakeet vacated its perch.  It then hopped onto that branch.  A very wet Rufous Treepie.  

In 2017 - I wrote about the treepie on the teak tree.  A very different and musical one.

The rufous treepie (Dendrocitta vagabunda) with wet feathers.  It was silent for a change, usual has loud crow-like rattly calls, or.a musical one - it has quite a variety of calls.

The usually smooth cinnamon coloured breast -  all wet.  Please pardon the backlit pictures.

The tail caught my attention.  White feathers seemed more bedraggled than the black!  When dry, the tail is one nice straight and elegant trail.  Now it looked like that of the racket-tailed drongo!  In tamil, I think its called the "Vaal kaka" - very appropriate.

Some internet scrolling and there may be something to my observation.  Dark coloured feathers have more melanin and this makes them stiffer, more resistant to wear, and less prone to damage from UV light and bacteria. Aha!

After some feather shaking and preening, he/she hopped onto the next branch and seemed to be removing its rage and unhappiness by chewing on a twig with great vigour. 

Or maybe he/she found some bug and I am judging harshly.  They are quite the omnivores eating both veg and non veg as we Indians like to say.  

After a while, off he/she went and I also went back to my morning chores.