Our Dog is no more.
i am covering up of its loss and companionship by encouraging birds in our little garden including honey birds (humming Birds).
Bul Bul decided to build a nest over my head (where I do my leisure reading).
The magpie and bul bul devour my guppy fish.
I have grown lilies with pretty large leaves (counted 11 flowers yesterday) for them to hide under.
I moved all my reading material to the dining room.
The roof top garden is left to go wild now and I am sure little Munia will build a nest again after the monsoon rain, if they survive the horrible weather.
Reproduction
Paddy Bird (Wee Kurulla), My Dog's Woolly hair and Leaves of Havari Nuga
Paddy
Bird (Wee Kurulla), My Dog's Woolly hair and Leaves of Havari Nuga and
dried up leaves of grass
I wanted to write about
global warming and constipation but my readers are spared of ignominy
thanks to the Paddy Bird.
Let me deal with a
copyright issue first.
I wanted to put a picture
of my favourite bird with this piece and searched for a free
photograph.
I found one but it was
copyrighted.
I know this guy has a good
camera and never cared for a paddy bird let alone take the husk out
of a rice seed (which birds are experts).
He is so selfish he tries
to own this birds picture.
He is a sordid bird
watcher.
I of course (my wife too)
for the last 15 years trying to encourage breeding of these birds in
our garden.
I never thought that my
rooftop garden (birds' paradise in all other respect with water and
insects including dragonflies) was conduce for their breeding.
Couple of weeks ago I was
watering the water plants and a paddy bird flew across my ear in an
aggressive manner.
I just ignored it and did
not give any eye contact.
Thanks to my wife's effort
lot of birds visit our mulberry tree daily.
With scorching
temperatures, hitting 95 outside most of my terrestrial plants
including the two cocoa plants are shedding their leaves at a rate
that alarmed me to my bones.
I decided to do
an overall and reduce the numbers of plants to the minimum to cut
down on our water bill which was above the electricity (which is also
very high) first time in my life.
For the last
three days, with a planned strategy to ease my blind dog's night prowl (no
prey but jasmine flowers and spirit weed to sniff) around the trees,
I made a wide pathway so that he does not bump against the plant pots.
On the third day
(today) I wanted to uproot the second but the tallest tree (hawari
nuga and the tallest is an exotic local plant the name I do not
know- I got it from a local gardener who is an expert on medicinal
plants) but I could not.
Then I looked at
it in a meditative mode, this does not deserve an unnatural death and
looked at its long leaves.
Presto!
Empty bird's
nest.
Owned by the
paddy bird few weeks ago but discarded having got its brood out.
It was made of my
dog's woolly soft hair (90%) and few grassy bits and a single leaf of
a Havari Nuga.
I thought for a
moment not only he contributes his liquid fertilizer to my gardening
efforts but gives comfort cushion to avi-fauna's young ones.
He got lovely
treat for his indirect contribution.
Birds of feather
fly together.
In other word
nature nurtures nature.
I hope the guy
who sells the photos of birds reads this in full.
In a
different note if Europeans did not come and G.B.Henry did not tabulate
our avi-fauna, this guy would not know how to name a bird.
Series of reproduction from WiKipedia
Hair
of the dog",
short for "Hair
of the dog that bit you",
is a colloquial expression in the English language predominantly used
to refer to alcohol that is consumed with the aim of lessening the
effects of a hangover.
The
expression originally referred to a method of treatment of a rabid
dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the bite wound.
Ebenezer
Cobham Brewer writes in the Dictionary
of Phrase and Fable
(1898): "In Scotland it is a popular belief that a few hairs of
the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil
consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have
indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine within 24 hours to
soothe the nerves. 'If this dog do you bite, soon as out of your bed,
take a hair of the tail the next day.'" He also cites two
apocryphal poems containing the phrase, one of which is attributed to
Aristophanes. It is possible that the phrase was used to justify an
existing practice, and the idea of Latin: similia
similibus curantur
("like cures like") dates back at least to the time of
Hippocrates and exists today as the basic postulate of classical
homeopathy. In the 1930s cocktails known as Corpse Revivers were
served in hotels.
Alstonia
macrophylla or
Hard alstonia, Hard milkwood or Big-leaved macrophyllum is a species
of plant in the Apocynaceae family.
It
is native to Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sulawesi), Malaysia, the
Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. It was introduced to Sri Lanka,
where it is known as hawari
nuga by local
Sinhalese people.
Alstonia
macrophylla is a tree with a straight trunk and a high, narrow crown.
It can become up to 30 meters tall. The trunk and branches contain a
white latex. The bark is smooth and has a light grey color. Leaves
are in whorls of three to four, simple, penni-veined, membranous, and
glabrous above. Leaf-blades are 10 to 50 centimeters long, 5 to 15 cm
wide, widest in or above the middle, and cuneate at the base. Flowers
are about 7 mm in diameter, white, with narrow corolla tube, placed
terminal on twigs. Fruits are about 30 centimeters long, green and
filled with many small hairy seeds that are dispersed far and wide by
the wind. The heartwood is yellowish, with a straight and shallowly
interlocked grain with a moderately fine to rather coarse texture.
The
common tailorbird
(Orthotomus sutorius)
is a songbird found across tropical Asia. Popular for its nest made
of leaves "sewn" together and immortalized by Rudyard
Kipling in his Jungle
Book, it is a common
resident in urban gardens. Although shy birds that are usually hidden
within vegetation, their loud calls are familiar and give away their
presence. They are distinctive in having a long upright tail,
greenish upper body plumage and rust coloured forehead and crown.
This passerine bird
is typically found in open farmland, scrub, forest edges and gardens.
Tailorbirds get their name from the way their nest is constructed.
The edges of a large leaf are pierced and sewn together with plant
fibre or spider silk to make a cradle in which the actual nest is
built.
Like
most warblers, the common tailorbird is insectivorous. The song is a
loud cheeup-cheeup-cheeup
with variations across the populations.
The disyllabic calls are
repeated often
Scaly-breasted
Munia/Spotted Munia (Lonchura puntulata)
Very
common resident bird of grasslands, gardens and paddy fields
throughout the island. It lives as flocks of about ten birds and
feeds on grass seeds and paddy. Scaly-breasted Munia breeds
throughout the year though most nests are found in the period of
October to May. The nest is a ball of grass blades in trees or
shrubs.
Thorny trees like lime or orange and sometime areca palm
flowers are much favored nesting sites.
