I am no ornithologist, but I have a great love of birds. Watching birds is a pastime so dear to my heart. As I had the fortune of having lived for more than a decade in a village, closer to nature, I treasure many pleasant memories of watching birds of varied species.
Watching flocks of varied birds and different colours flying in the mornings and evenings and birds flying down to trees and perching on the branches offers me immense pleasure. But to me, an avid bird-watcher, what is more splendid, intriguing and fascinating is how birds, with their wings flapping, take flight into the firmament. The whole preparation for its flight involves a series of interesting actions. The chain of actions the bird makes in the process of its flight can be quite noticeable in big birds, and not in small birds such as sparrows, pigeons and parrots. In these birds, we hardly notice any series of preparatory actions to take their flights into the sky. They simply flutter their wings, rise swiftly into the sky and soar silently into the skyscape.
When big birds such as pelicans, cranes and storks are spotted in vast spaces near paddy fields or on the banks of tanks or streams, the whole process of their flight unfolds slowly before human eyes to the immense delight of the bird watcher. I was always on the lookout for the presence of pelicans, cranes and storks in fields or near ponds. Whenever I confronted these huge beautiful winged creatures, I placed myself a few feet away from these avian creatures without perturbing them. In utter quiet, I kept eyeing them with my heart in raptures. From many of my observations of these huge birds for many years, I grasped the whole process of flight of these birds. Before taking flight, these birds would flap their wide wings, running swiftly on the ground while opening their wings wide and flapping them incessantly. They float in wind, spindle their bodies, fly into the sky and keep soaring higher and higher into the firmament till they are transformed into tiny, white dots like stars.
While watching the varied stages of the bird’s flight with my eyes unblinking, I experienced tremendous excitement and infinite joy. Even small birds flying in the sky, threading the whole space in the vast blue, creating curious patterns of endless lines would invariably hook my watching eyes. Whenever flocks of innumerable birds of different species and myriad colours greeted my eyes, my heart would leap and I would scream in elation, “What an exciting, exhilarating spectacle of birds.”
But alas, now living in a concrete jungle amid factory fumes and polluted air, far-alienated from nature with no birds in sight, I am far from the joy of bird-watching.
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