This morning as we went out for a walk there wasn't much to see. I heard a coucal very close to me in an empty property that has been fenced off to avoid trespassers and occupiers. Coucals are very shy creatures. There are heard more than they are seen, they hide in thickets and are clumsy creatures. They avoid being noticed by people even though they live close to human dwellings. The crow pheasant as they are also called belong to the cuckoo family. They looks more like crows with reddish brown wing feathers. They are similar to the Asian crow in size as well.
The greater coucal sounds like some African drum beat, deep and loud. Almost every morning I wake up to the calls of the greater coucal and the tiny sunbirds. Their calls are worlds apart one so deep, loud and rumbling while the other is sof, silvery and sweet. I hear the coucals all around our neighborhood but I rarely see them in the open. I went all around the site to see the coucal, I spotted him in the far end of the sit sitting on a corner stone. The bird kept hopping from one stone pillar to another.
The bird was trying to hide behind the bushes when it saw me. The the coucal was barely visible in the images I got. I had to go around the block for another round hoping that the bird would settle down and let me take at a least a couple of good photographs.
At this time of the year there isn't much to see and so I didn't carry my camera around, so during the two laps we did hubs quickly ran into our home and fetched my camera. Thankfully the bird was still around hopping from one stone pillar to another edgily.
I took a couple of quick shots and I knew both were blurred and bad. The bird kept hopping and moving rather fearfully, the next two shots came out much better though they were not great. I was still happy with what I got. The bird flew away into a thorny bush quickly and later flew further into a clump of trees nearby and perched himself clumsily in the cleft of a branch.
Our walk was not brinsk this morning because of this birdy-intrusion, but a happy one all the same. After a bout of flu for six days today was the first day I went out for a walk this week. My knees felt weak and I was feeling rather tired and sweaty by then. I quickly got back home while the hubs continued his walk for a further fifteen minutes.
I sometimes wish that I could go back to our old neighborhood for walks. There we get to see birds all year round. However, there aren't that many lakes close to us in that part of the city. That is life you don't have everything you want, you learn to cherish what you have, and make the best of them.
I was looking for the bee catchers and they seem to be visibly missing near the railway tracks. There are a few dozens of them in March and April their mating season, after which I hardly see them in these parts. Even the common drongos have gone missing perhaps it's the lack of rain and greenery that is driving them away from the places where they are normally sighted.
Oh and they is a lot of construction happening on the other side of the railway track, maybe that is another reason as well. All the open spaces have given way to buildings and all the trees have been sacrificed to make space of the on going constructions. It is sad but true that in the name of development we are chasing all our feathered friends to the edges of life.
We somehow forget that these winged beauties are our rightful neighbors too and we cannot force them out of their habitat. The hoopoes which once used to be hopping around and pecking holes in trees are not to be seen anymore. I used to see them taking dust baths near the playground close to our homes when I was a kid.
Well its a sad post but I am glad that the trees we planted are growing well and will bring more birds to our neighborhood and makes our walks here more colorful and beautiful.
Thanks for hanging out with me this far, I appreciate your time and support.
Since this post about birds I posted it in the #featheredfriends community but since its about #wednesday walk I wanted to club these two as well.