Courting’s On
“Springtime à la Carte”
All images © Writer
I’d have loved to attest the scenes I’m going to describe with pictures but I have none yet. So I’ll supplement it with my gallery photos.
It’s mid-February, and I’m excited about the coming Spring. I love flowers and plants and all the buzz they bring with them. It’s bliss personified, to watch the spectacle, listen to the squawk and buzz, and inhale the scents. I’m transfixed, and I later realize that I am and was meditating.
Magic realism
To just be, is possible nowhere more extraordinarily than in nature’s vicinity. I have realized this to be true for myself time and again. This works for me, so much so that I believe it to be magic realism. And I have a modest-sized garden, the second one in four years, to revel in. I can see what Ghibli movies show, I can even see them in a concrete and car-adoring city like Gurgaon. Here’s a year-old picture story on that.
Springtime
Spring is special. See proof. In spring more or less all plants, dormant or otherwise, pop up in their best display. Everyone’s happy, you can say that just by looking at the green and otherwise.
Plants and flowers aside, you get to see a riveting amount of animal activity.
The scenes
Since the mulberry tree is looking bare with yellow leaves, and new growth and fruits are a month or so away (high Spring I call that), I can clearly see a couple of parrot pairs courting. They’re interesting and funny. One parrot will bob its head and make cute popping sounds, and the other will just stare judgementally. Sometimes they’ll preen and groom between themselves. And will come feed in groups and have very loud conversations.
Mourning Doves are sort of always courting. It’s rampant in the spring of course. They look so timid, but I’ve known them to be the last bird to bolt when terrors appear (cat, dog, human).
Blue Rock Pigeons (Kevins I call them) land their heaviness and start courting and mercilessly beating the other guy. There’s always the third-wheel kind of Kevin who gets beaten. And he is always there. I guess for the food. You’ll also notice that the Kevin who’s heroically puffed up and wooing suddenly deflates into a normal size when he has unwittingly managed to scare the girl away.
Cats. I mean, they’re yowling with emotions right from winter’s end. Fights, otherworldly guttural scores, prolonged threat sessions — you’re bound to notice something or the other if cats live in the vicinity. What do they fight for? They fight for territory, they fight for love. This reminds me of that quote by Albert Camus —
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Brown-headed Barbets have a bit of a raucous personality. I’ve only seen one at a time around the garden except in spring. A pair visits the feeding bowl, and one by one they fly in and pick out the largest grapes. It’s concerning to watch that bird trying valiantly to down a big grape within seconds. Could it choke? But it’s all a flamboyant show for the one perched up in the mulberry. Up flies the impressor, out comes the fruit with flair and is offered to the keen lady for decisioning. In the garden they meet, greet, eat and then fly away noisily.
Thank you for reading.
