Six Years on and my metamorphosis to bird watching
These Chameleon have survived the last six years and three generations (probably breed fast) of them were in my roof top garden.
Like the magpie the bird they come to devour my guppy fish (even though two third of the top is covered with plastic netting for sun shade- fish die due to heat stroke).
They even eat the black bees.
Fortunately the black bees have another colony now (that the Chameleon has not discovered) near my fish tank.
Now I ignore them but I have become a bird lover and our garden is bird friendly by all accounts.
My favorite is the Mynah but watching the humming bird feeding is painful.
I think they spend more energy feeding than overcoming the hunger pain.
I sit and watch them (no eye contact) for hours on end.
Coming to Mynah, he is the most cheerful guy, I call them the cheer leaders in our garden,
Come rain, come sunshine they always have a cheerful melody.
Even the tiny squirrel (last generation that survived the cats) gives way to the Mynah (Squirrels spend lot of time feeding the seeds of the palm tree).
Now coming to the palm (one out of three) tree it has three seed pods of flowers that mature at different times, giving mature seeds to feed the visitor birds, longer than the mulberry tree that stopped blossoming after the rain came in.
Plants have senses that fine tune for the needy (hungry) birds.
Chameleon,
The unexpected Visitor
I
have not seen a Chameleon for ages except for the Chameleon Linux
Desktop which is capable of changing its window screen.
ChameleonOS
is crammed with a range of pre-configured ‘skins’ that will
instantly alter the appearance of your desktop (panels, wallpaper,
icon and GTK them).
The
default skin is available in a range of colours and there are also
skins providing the same look and feel as the Gnome Desktop, KDE 3
and Windows Vista / Windows 7.
In
the animal kingdom, Chameleon belongs to any of the 160 lizards that
can change the colour of the skin at will.
The
chameleon, I saw today was in full flight mounted on a another
chameleon.
My
visit was not welcome (to collect the letters from the letter
box) and the female parted the company and the exhausted male who was
very angry at my intrusion.
Even
though, I was not psychopathic to catch a frame in action for my
next book, I quickly fetched my digital camera but its battery was
dead.
Last
time, I got hold the camera was when two Geckos were in full heat in
the middle of the night but before I could catch a frame the guy and
the girl were smart enough to retreat to a crevice.
In
nature psychopaths are not allowed, I said to myself and kept the
camera (for its own safety) back in its case.
Let
me tell you why they are breeding in my tiny garden.
The
top most is my dog who does not allow any cats to venture into our
tiny garden except his favorite cunning virile tiny cat without a
tail (which does not interfere with his mating habits).
Unlike
other cats, he expects cover from my dog for his own safety from
other cats.
My
assessment of this cat is that he is a cat-womanizer-feline-felonizer
and except for mating he has no other obsessions in life and has all
the tell tale marks of bite marks on his face and back.
My
dog for some unknown reason gives cover for this cat.
The
reason being (most probably) his childhood friend our cat disappeared
on a Poya day in this blessed city and ended up as meat in Kandy
hotel during Perehara, many moons ago.
They
were god pals and soul mates.
My
dog misses its soul mate and this ugly cat is his present decoy
unwanted by all the cats and me too.
I
am cat hater by default since they devour all the animals including
lizards.
The
other reason is that there is a little patch of land, let go wild a
bit by my wife.
There
is ample hiding and resting ground for tiny animals, including
spiders.
That
is again by default.
These spiders attract the humming birds too.
Having
lost the opportunity to catch a frame, I did a little survey to see
that there was a little (puppy) lizard not yet mature.
I am going to see many of them in time to come if the guy was virile enough to fertilize and my rude interruption did not hinder the proper dissemination of its sperms.
I
am going to have many more photo opportunities, if its act of fun was
successful.
That
is going to be my next book cover, if I catch a good frame.
I
must charge my camera battery tonight.
Edited on 06-04-2013)
I managed to take few pictures toady and it looks like there are four of them (two little ones too) and they are territorial lizards and do not fear me but would like to retire to their own safety and cover.
PS
Chameleon-OS
is based on Unity Linux 2010, which is in turn a fork of Mandriva.
(Not
Ubuntu Unity Desktop)
Unity
is specifically designed as a base for respins (or branches as they
like to call it).
The current window manager is Openbox with
Lxpanel (but not full LXDE).