#if i had to cook after a 10 hour shift i would really kms

[cheekblush]

so how are you supposed to get anything done when you work 40 hours a week?

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Mapping quest edges past 20% of global ocean floor (BBC) The quest to compile the definitive map of Earth’s ocean floor has edged a little nearer to completion. Modern measurements of the depth and shape of the seabed now encompass 20.6% of the total area under water. It’s only a small increase from last year (19%); but like everyone else, the Nippon Foundation-GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project has had cope with a pandemic. The extra 1.6% is an expanse of ocean bottom that equated to about half the size of the United States. The achievement to date still leaves, of course, four-fifths of Earth’s oceans without a contemporary depth sounding.

Watchdog: Nursing home deaths up 32% in 2020 amid pandemic (AP) Deaths among Medicare patients in nursing homes soared by 32% last year, with two devastating spikes eight months apart, a government watchdog reported Tuesday in the most comprehensive look yet at the ravages of COVID-19 among its most vulnerable victims. The report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services found that about 4 in 10 Medicare recipients in nursing homes had or likely had COVID-19 in 2020, and that deaths overall jumped by 169,291 from the previous year, before the coronavirus appeared. “We knew this was going to be bad, but I don’t think even those of us who work in this area thought it was going to be this bad,” said Harvard health policy professor David Grabowski, a nationally recognized expert on long-term care, who reviewed the report for The Associated Press. “This was not individuals who were going to die anyway,” Grabowski added. “We are talking about a really big number of excess deaths.”

Brazil passes half a million COVID-19 deaths, experts warn of worse ahead (Reuters) Brazil’s death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 500,000 on Saturday as experts warn that the world’s second-deadliest outbreak may worsen. Only 11% of Brazilians have been fully vaccinated and epidemiologists warn that, with winter arriving in the southern hemisphere and new variants of the coronavirus circulating, deaths will continue to mount even if immunizations gain steam. Brazil has registered 500,800 deaths from 17,883,750 confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to Health Ministry data on Saturday, the worst official death toll outside the United States.

Spanish prime minister says Catalan separatists convicted of sedition will be pardoned (Washington Post) Calling it a “huge step toward reconciliation,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his cabinet on Tuesday will approve pardons for nine separatists from Catalonia who were convicted of sedition for their role in a 2017 independence bid. The decision, opposed by a slight majority of Spaniards as well as the country’s Supreme Court, will mark the biggest political shift from the central government toward Catalonia since the chaotic referendum on independence four years ago. The move is aimed at defusing tensions in what has become Spain’s greatest political crisis since the transition to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. For some Catalans, the nine jailed leaders have become an emotional symbol for what they say is a right denied by Madrid to choose their region’s destiny. But it is unclear how dramatically the pardons will change the dynamic. Some pro-independence figures in Catalonia say the only proper peace offering is full amnesty—which would strike the crimes from the record, something that the pardons will not do.

Berlin expands bike lanes as COVID cycling boom continues (Reuters) Berlin is making permanent the extra bike lanes it added during coronavirus lockdowns as it seeks to support the cycling boom that started in the pandemic. The German capital has marked about 25 km (15 miles) of extra "pop-up" bike lanes since COVID-19 hit in 2020 as commuters switched to cycling to avoid crowded public transport. Other European cities—like Paris and London—have also been adding bike paths. The German Cyclists Association (ADFC) says bike traffic rose by 25% in Berlin due to the temporary lanes and the pandemic.

Russians’ return boosts Turkish tourism prospects (Reuters) Thousands of Russian tourists began arriving in Turkey on Tuesday, boosting hopes for its tourism sector after a two-month suspension in flights imposed by Moscow due to concerns about a surge in COVID-19 cases in April. Turkey’s tourism prospects have been revived by a sharp fall in daily coronavirus cases to around 5,000 from a peak of more than 60,000 two months ago, as well as an acceleration in vaccinations to more than 1 million a day. The first plane arrived in Antalya from Moscow around dawn, carrying 132 passengers. Some 12,000 Russians were expected to arrive on 44 planes in the Mediterranean tourist hub of Antalya on Tuesday, state-owned Anadolu news agency said.

Iran president-elect takes hard line, refuses to meet Biden (AP) Iran’s president-elect staked out a hard-line position Monday in his first remarks since his landslide election victory, rejecting the possibility of meeting with President Joe Biden or negotiating Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support of regional militias. The comments by Ebrahim Raisi offered a blunt preview of how Iran might deal with the wider world in the next four years as it enters a new stage in negotiations to resurrect its now-tattered 2015 nuclear deal with global powers.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily could shut under government pressure (Washington Post) In the 26 years since its founding, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper has been unrestrained in its criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and unwavering in its support for the pro-democracy movement. It has survived multiple raids, boycott campaigns and the arrest of its founder, Jimmy Lai, under the draconian new national security law. But now with its assets frozen by the Hong Kong government, the Chinese-language Apple Daily could cease operations as soon as Friday. The news outlet is unable to pay staff members or vendors and will be forced to close if the government declines to release its funds—shuttering the territory’s largest independent newspaper. “It is more than surreal to see,” said Ed Chin, a hedge fund manager and longtime Apple Daily columnist. “These so-called executors of the national security law—they have lost it. They are destroying the autonomy of Hong Kong.” The fate of Apple Daily and its chief editor, top executives and founder Jimmy Lai—all either detained or arrested under the national security law and facing life in prison—are emblematic of the staggering changes underway in Hong Kong. Freedoms guaranteed in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, including freedom of speech and the press, have become secondary to Beijing’s will as it re-engineers the once-autonomous territory and uses the new law to force subservience.

Australia’s runaway mouse plague targets prisons, forcing mass evacuation (Washington Post) Hundreds of prisoners at Wellington Correctional Center in Australia’s New South Wales state are being forced to move out of the facility as officials scramble to repair the damage caused by mice chomping through cables, scurrying across ceiling panels and embedding in the building’s walls. Corrective Services New South Wales Commissioner Peter Severin confirmed that “vital remediation work” needed to be carried out at the jail, which is located about four hours from Sydney, along with a thorough clean and review of the prison’s infrastructure. An estimated 420 male and female prisoners will be relocated over the next 10 days, along with at least 200 staff members. Pest control services have been summoned to remove the dead creatures from the walls, which authorities say is sending a potent stench into the air. Australia has a mouse problem. A plague, in fact. A mass invasion occurs every decade or so, wreaking havoc across communities and destroying the crops and stock of farmers who are worried about what the future holds for their livelihoods.

In times of crises, Lebanon's old must fend for themselves (AP) Tiny and bowed by age, Marie Orfali makes the trip five times a week from her Beirut apartment to the local church, a charity and a nearby soup kitchen to fetch a cooked meal for her and her 84-year-old husband, Raymond. Their only support—Raymond’s $15,000 one-time end-of-service payment from when he retired more than 20 years ago—long ago ran dry. They have since depended on charity to cover almost everything: rent, cleaning supplies, pain killers and food for their white dog Snoopy. But charity covers less and less as Lebanon’s currency collapses. The cash they get from a benefactor and the church every month, once amounting to $400, is now barely worth $40. The 76-year-old Marie broke down in tears when asked how she’s doing. With virtually no national welfare system, Lebanon’s elderly are left to fend for themselves amid their country’s economic turmoil. In their prime years, they survived 15 years of civil war that started in 1975 and bouts of instability. Now, in their old age, many have been thrown into poverty by one of the world’s worst financial crises in the past 150 years. Lebanon has the greatest number of elderly in the Middle East—10% of the population of 6 million is over 65.

Palestinians, settlers clash in tense Jerusalem neighborhood (AP) Palestinians and Jewish settlers hurled stones, chairs and fireworks at each other overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where settler groups are trying to evict several Palestinian families, officials said Tuesday. The threatened evictions fueled protests and clashes in the runup to last month’s 11-day Gaza war and pose a test for Israel’s new governing coalition, which includes three pro-settler parties but is hoping to sideline the Palestinian issue to avoid internal divisions. The Red Crescent emergency service said its crews treated 20 Palestinians, including 16 suffering from pepper spray and tear gas and others wounded by rubber-coated bullets. Two other people were wounded, including an elderly man who was hit in the head, it said. The eruption of violence is the latest friction in Sheikh Jarrah, where weeks of unrest captured international attention ahead of the 11-day Israel-Hamas war last month. The cease-fire took effect on May 21, but the long-running campaign by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families continues.

They disappeared after encounters with Nigeria’s security forces (Washington Post) Her last sighting of her son was in a photo on social media. His eyes were shut. His face was covered in blood. He was dead. Now Ndifreke Ibanga is tormented by a recurring nightmare: her 26-year-old weeping. Victor’s soul will not rest, she worries, until his body is found. Victor is one of the hundreds of civilians who rights groups say are killed or disappear each year after encounters with Nigerian security forces—and one of more than a dozen still missing after a demonstration against police brutality in the city of Lagos in October. Some vanish after being taken into custody; others, like Victor, are presumed dead after public confrontations with police or soldiers. The families of victims are haunted by a singular question: What happened to their bodies? Local rights groups and international watchdogs have long accused Nigerian forces of carrying out extrajudicial killings and disappearing the corpses. Many are never found. But some are. Interviews with family members and friends of Nigerians who disappeared in similar circumstances shed light on a gruesome pattern: As a result of intense search efforts, or happenstance, or both, the bodies of their loved ones turned up at mortuaries and anatomy labs, nameless and without an easy explanation of how they arrived—or how they died.

[ultra-sandy-things]

TALKIE IN MAIDAN

Today, I am planning to travel way back to 1981, when we had shifted to Nagpur consequent upon my father’s transfer from Bokaro Steel City to Nagpur. I joined Junior college in August. Everyday while going to college I used to see the making of a pandal in a big ground which was about 10 minutes from my house. I was told that in Ganesh Chathurthi beautiful statute of Lord Ganapati is installed and celebration will be there for 10 days. There will be a lot of programs and they will be showing us movies also. 

Finally, Ganpati  Bappa had arrived in September and we were very excited that we will be enjoying the 10-day celebrations. My neighbor Shilpa was a good friend of mine. She said that in the pamphlet distributed they have given the name of 4 movies all are hit Hindi movies we will go. But the time of the show is 8.30 pm after aarti, blog. I came and floated the idea of going for the movie. My grandparents and appa refused. They said it’s too late we will not allow. I was heartbroken, then I next day I told Shilpa that I have not got permission. She said we will have to work out some plans.  

Though I went to college the next day, the whole day I kept on brooding about not getting the permission. When I returned home I saw her waiting for me outside my house. She said ‘ I have an idea, today they are going to screen ‘ KATI PATANG’ we will go’. I said, I do not have permission. She said ‘ My self and my brother Amit will come with my mother, you also convince your mother and you and Bhavani come with her.’ Girhe Aunty, Shilpa’s mother came to my house and told my amma that it will be nice. Many mothers come with their children.  

Wah! What a great idea, I thought. Told amma, she said “ How can I come? It will be too late, I have to cook in the morning for appa, Bhavani has school at 7 a.m., I have to make Dabba for her.” I became sad, told Bhavani, my younger sister that amma is not agreeing for the movie. Bhavani told amma that she is ok with Biscuit in tiffin. We convinced amma. Dinner was served at 7.30 pm., an hour before time to my grandparents and appa, we assisted amma with great enthusiasm so we leave for the movie at 8 pm.

It was an open maidan ( ground ), we had to carry mat. We carried mat and reached by 8.15 so that we get a comfortable place to sit on the ground. I had taken a bottle of water, amma took biscuits, chips, since we had our dinner at 7 pm, itself, she anticipated that we would be hungry. She was also carrying umbrella since it was September and usually during Ganesh Chaturthi there is rain. So amma, myself, Bhavani, Shilpa, Amit and Girhe Aunty, we were there. We were happy to meet many of our friends with their mothers while reaching the ground. When we reached the ground lot of crowd was already there. We were asked to sit on both sides and leave space for the projector.

 Then our wait began. We got up many times to see whether the projector had arrived. Finally, at 9.15 p.m. the projector arrived. The movie did not start, We were told that ‘ KATI PATANG’ was screened in Bajaj Nagar which is 2.5 km from Laxmi Nagar ( place of our stay)and we will be getting the film reel once the screening is over at Bajaj Nagar .

Finally, the film reel arrived at 10 p.m. By that time our one round of snacks was over. But our excitement was still there. The movie was shown on a white wall. We watched the movie. Though it was a 10-year-old movie it was nice, it had lovely songs. 

Suddenly the film reel got over. There was light again. People started waving their hands, the shadows were seen. We were waiting for 15 minutes for the arrival of another reel. People started hooting, one of the volunteers of Ganesh Chaturthi pandal went on his bike to bring the reel from Bajaj Nagar. The leftover ‘ Sheera’ after mahaprasad was distributed to all those watching movies. Finally, the reel arrived, the movie started again.

 By the time the movie got over, it was 1.30 a.m., but we were neither tired, nor sleepy. We came home happy, we really enjoyed watching the movie on the ground. Bhavani got up and went to school on time. I went to college on time. 

With this adventure, a new group was formed, we all used to go with our mother’s and enjoy all the movies screened in Ganesh Chaturthi. We used to take lot of eateries with us. 

Though, the technology has become very advanced now, watching movie in old style is still remembered and brings smile on the face.

 GANPATI BAPPA MORYA !

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Every Heroine Needs A Side-Kick. In Night-Time Bangalore, Mine Is My Dog

By Bhanu Sridharan

Photo courtesy Roger Price via graffiticreator.org

Tube was a semi-street dog when he followed us home. It was 2012. My friends and I had just graduated with a masters in wildlife biology. There were six of us, four women and two men—including my boyfriend—and we were renting two flats in a small building in an obscure area called Sir MV Layout in North Bangalore. My poor parents were just getting over the fact that I didn’t move back home after two years in a hostel, and that I was sharing a house with both men and women when I had to explain the presence of a dog in the house.

We were walking home after a party (in er… high spirits) and at some point noticed this dog walking back with us. Tube slept on our verandah that night but over the next few weeks, he moved into the house one room at a time, until somehow he was sleeping on my bed and kicking me off it. We were both just entering adulthood and neither of us wanted to get our own food, but as you can imagine only one of us won that battle. While the humans learnt to cook, pay bills and be biologists, Tube learnt to bark and sharpen his teeth on our footwear and debit cards. Eventually, he found himself a huge cow bone. He was fiercely protective of that bovine remain—nobody else could touch it. That’s when I realised that we may never agree on politics.

Other than that, Tube was an easy dog to live with. He slept all day on a sofa in the living room and at night after dinner, joined his pack of friends outside. He would usually be gone from 10 in the night to 4 or 5 in the morning. He would knock on the door (with his paw, in case you were wondering) in the wee hours of the morning and cry outside my bedroom window until I let him in. This went on for four years.

As must happen, my friends moved out one by one. I married my boyfriend and he promptly left the country to pursue a PhD, while I decided to write about wildlife rather than study them. As soon as I had made this decision, I decided to procrastinate by focusing on other things, like moving houses. So I shifted to a new place, a whole two km away, in an area called Sahakarnagar. After four years of living with an assortment of friends and my husband, suddenly it was just woman and dog. We turned up on this beautiful street with a jackfruit tree, a pongamia tree and two huge raintrees. Tube wasn’t impressed.

I could see his point—dogs aren’t monkeys. He felt marooned in this new place; he had lost his territory and pack. And somehow I had chosen the only street in Bangalore with no other dogs. Actually there was one dog; an elderly one-eyed dog who did not like Tube. In fact most dogs didn’t like Tube. So he couldn’t just go out freely. That’s when it dawned on me that I would now have to take him out for walks every day. Something I had never done before.

On our first day out for a walk, Tube tried to mark my neighbours’ car and he has never given up. You can forget about having friendly neighbours after that. So we walked around looking for suitable car-free, dog-friendly streets where he could roam freely. It was during these explorations that I discovered a lively living neighbourhood. Sahakarnagar and its surrounding areas are relatively new suburbs that have exploded in value thanks to Bangalore airport. A surprising number of trees soften the huge houses that have sprung up here. I would drag my dog through these streets every morning, evening and night. Unlike old Bangalore neighbourhoods such as Basavanagudi or Rajajinagar, the streets are not filled with gulmohars, tabubias and copperpods. The most common trees here are pongamia, Singapore cherry and a mix of raintrees, bahunias and coconut trees. Occasionally, a jackfruit or mango tree would pop up.

A red whiskered bulbul. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan

Most people would walk their dog on a wide road parallel to a railway tack. This railway track runs from north Bangalore to the Yeshwanthpur railway station in the west. For those who say walking your dog is great exercise, pardon me while I scoff at you. Tube sees no point in running, unless we are chasing or being chased by a dog. Walking him involved a lot of standing around, while he sniffed every single pile of dog poop and rubbish. Because I didn’t want to look down at what caught his attention, I started looking up, at the Singapore cherry trees lining this road. These trees were constantly flowering and filled with fruits and birds. In the morning, purple-rumped sunbirds drank nectar from the flowers with their long bills. Pale-billed flowerpeckers, tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand, would eat the fruits, sharing space with squirrels. In the evenings, rose-ringed parakeets, barbets, jungle crows and jungle mynas would settle on the trees, loudly announcing their presence.

But Tube was soon bored of this bourgeois life, of orderly walking and sharing defecation spots with large pedigree dogs. These quiet streets held no appeal for him. I think he also found me inadequate. I could never walk as fast as him, slow down at the right bush or clear off when a friendly dog approached. We were also frequently disagreeing about which tree to stop next to—Tube had no time for my bird-watching. I realised that these outings would be most fun if we could both do our own thing. That’s when we crossed the railway track.

Tube eating lantana. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan

The railway track is a long gash, separating the affluent neighbourhoods of Sahakarnagar from the empty spaces that will soon be affluent neighbourhoods in Rajiv Gandhi Nagar. Across the railway track we discovered a land divided into 30×40 sites. Some of them were being turned into huge houses, but there were plenty of empty plots filled with bushes of castor, calotropes and lantana. Grasses and reeds almost made the area feel like a grassland. Early mornings here were filled with migrant labourers defecating in the open, before building massive bathrooms for the area’s future residents. But Tube loved these parts—here he could walk free of the leash. He sniffed and marked bushes, sand piles laid out for construction, and garbage strewn on the side of the road. Occasionally, he would flush out an ashy prinia hiding in the lantana. Parakeets, jungle mynas, wagtails and black drongos would pass us by. Satisfied with our spot, we came here every morning and evening. But at night I stuck to the railway track road, close to my house.

It’s not because I felt unsafe. But thanks to his past life, Tube became alert and excited after 9 pm. He would want to join every howling dog and investigate every passing pack. Sometimes, he would just sit on a pavement and watch the empty street. It is a huge conflict of interest, because I wanted to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. By sticking to the boring street, I tried to convince him that there wasn’t much happening at night.

Others did worry for my safety at that hour. One of my neighbours (who attempted to lecture me about having boys in my house at 11 in the night) tried to dissuade me from walking Tube after 9 in the night. When I refused to take his advice, he offered to wait up for me to come back into the building every night. He gave up when his wife reminded him that he had to wake up early and take his children to school. Passing policemen have asked me why I’m out so late. There are criminal elements at night they tell me. Sometimes, I tell them to catch the criminals and leave me alone; on more peaceful nights though, I just shrug and point to the dog, who will move things along by growling. Elderly men occasionally warned me that there are snakes about at this time. So I try to tell them that I am a trained wildlife biologist and know what to do, only to realise that I had better leave because my dog is peeing on their car.

Women rarely show concern for my safety at night. Admittedly, there aren’t too many around at night, but occasionally they will turn out in groups of two and three enjoying the night air or taking in a brisk after-dinner walk. They never look surprised or worried by the sight of me roaming alone. Occasionally, people catch me staring at an electric pole, with my mouth hanging open and Tube desperately tugging at the leash. I would be watching a pair of spotted owlets or a beautiful barn owl. Of course by the time I could show them the birds, they would have flown away, leaving me pointing at nothing. People always walk away quickly when this happens.

Winter is my favourite season as a birdwatcher. Birds escaping the harsh cold weather of the Himalayas and Europe come down to peninsular India. Warblers, flycatchers, eagles and other birds of prey make the long journey down to warmer parts, where I imagine them settling down, relaxing and fattening up. There are certain birds that mark the arrival of winter. Down south, I think it must be the Blyth’s reed warbler. By October, I began hearing a familiar chak chak from the lantana bushes. It is a small dull-looking brown bird—but here all the way from places like Kazakhstan and Mongolia to spend winter amidst garbage and rubble and Tube’s ungainly scrambling. By late December, other visitors had come down. Hundreds of rosy starlings occupied every inch of an electric transformer, wires, bushes, trees and the ground. They are really pretty birds with a pale pink body and a jet black head and wings. A flock of starlings are called a murmuration. I understood why when I saw about 300 of them arrive together, weaving through the sky in synchrony one evening. By the next morning, they had split up into smaller groups of about 30 to 60. Up close, they are a crude noisy bunch, squawking loudly and surely quarrelling with their cousins, the mynas.

Photo courtesy Ron Knight via Wikimedia Commons

Further up, near some new apartments is a huge fig tree. Most trees don’t fruit in winter, but figs do. A fruiting fig tree will provide for almost everybody. Barbets, parakeets, rosy starlings, spotted doves, mynas, crows and pigeons flock to these trees. A golden oriole, another winter visitor, has settled down here. This area is right next to the GKVK campus, a huge agricultural research space. GKVK has a mix of agricultural fields, orchards and tiny patches of the original scrub forest from which Bangalore has been carved out. Birds passing by this area on their way into the campus were a frequent sight. A common kestrel (a small falcon), a rufous treepie (a member of the crow family) and grey hornbills occasionally pass by.

Beside the fig tree is a plot of land fenced by a huge concrete wall—we both always peek in there. Tube has to climb a pile of rocks and jump onto the wall to look, but he makes the effort. I don’t think he think he finds this exercise particularly rewarding, but we would find three green bee-eaters sitting in there, waiting for the sun to come up, so they could snatch up little insects that flew about then. Occasionally, a startled Indian robin would rush past us. This is usually the end of the walk. We would never go beyond this spot because there was a sweet dog that Tube hated. I wasn’t allowed to be friendly with any dogs he didn’t like. It’s oppressive, but I kept a stiff upper lip and turned back

Towards the end of February, tragedy struck. Tube was badly hurt on one of our walks and we were house-bound for three weeks. We only ventured out for him to pee and shit or visit the vet. The rest of the time was spent cleaning his injuries and finding new ways to feed him his medicines. During his worst days, he spent all day in my bathroom, maybe because it was cool and dark. I would sit with him there, trying to comfort him while he whimpered continuously in pain. I spent hours there: reading, watching movies and American comedy shows mocking Donald Trump, on my laptop. I love my dog, but I felt my sanity ebbing during those times. After about 10 days, he started leaving the bathroom for short periods and sitting under the dining table. So I set up my laptop there and tried to start working on that writing thing. It was then that I was really grateful for the trees in my neighbourhood. From my second floor window, adjacent the dining table, I had lovely views of the canopy of a kadamba tree, a coconut tree and a jumble of bahunia, gulmohar and badam behind my house. From the kitchen, I could look into the canopy of the raintree that stands in the front. I had forgotten until then, that a pair of black kites had a nest in there. I had seen the female sitting in the nest for almost two months, but I was never very interested.

A black kite and it’s nest. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan.

Black kites are basically one of the most common birds you will see in Bangalore and in most Indian cities. The female was standing in the nest and looking down at something. I grabbed my binoculars and looked through the metal grille surrounding my kitchen utility. A furry chick stood uncertainly in the nest, staring at the mother. Its eyes and head looked huge on its tiny body, while the curved beak typical of a bird of prey looked almost comical—nothing remotely threatening about its appearance. Soon, through my binoculars, I spot another smaller chick. Watching them every day became a ritual. Sometimes mid-morning, the female would leave them alone for a bit and the larger older chick would peek out over the rim of the nest looking forlorn. In the afternoon, the mother would feed the hungry chicks, while they screamed for more. A black kite sounds like a horse whinnying; the chicks sound exactly the same but higher-pitched. Black kites will often nest on water tanks on top of tall buildings. But watching them on a tree like that, reminded me that they did have some wilderness in them.

As March rolled by, things started looking up. Tube slowly started doing much better. He left the bathroom much more, he didn’t cry as much and let me clean his wounds. We were walking as far as the railway track road again; he even tried to cross the track a couple of times. As the weather turned warmer, other birds started breeding or at least courting. Birds were pairing up and males were calling all around, marking territory and advertising to females. Male pied bushchats—small black birds common in dry open areas of peninsular India—were singing loudly from their perches on electric wires.

At the kadamba tree outside my dining table office, tailorbirds were calling loudly and a pair of jungle crows had built a nest. Crows are aggressively protective of their nest. While the female cawed loudly from the nest each day, the male would chase away every bird, big or small. Black kites, bulbuls, pigeons and barbets would suddenly find themselves being unceremoniously escorted off the tree by a large (or depending on the size of the victim, small) black figure. But they reserved a special anger for the koels, and understandably so. Koels are brood parasites. They lay eggs in the nests of other birds like crows, who then raise the koel chicks mistaking them for their own. Outside my window, a male koel would call out loudly from a nearby pongamia tree, in what seemed to be a move to distract, while the female sneaked up on the nest in the adjacent kadamaba tree. It never seemed to work. The crows would always find the female skulking on their tree and chase her and the male for good measure. This happened every day and then one afternoon I noticed both the crows left the nest unattended. Right on cue, a female koel flew onto the lower-most branch of the tree. Taking a circuitous route, she hopped cautiously to the nest right at the top and peeked in. She then looked around, jumped in and was out within a minute. I excitedly called my husband, who is much better with the birds. He confirmed that it was enough time for a koel to lay an egg. Eventually, the poor unsuspecting crows returned to their nest. In about two more weeks, I hope to find out if there is a little koel chick being fed by these jungle crows.

Blyth’s reed warbler. Photo courtesy Shankar70 via Wikimedia Commons

Today, Tube decides he has had enough of these short stints on the boring railway track road. He drags me towards the railway crossing, looking defiant. I relent and we cross. For the first time in days, he looks truly happy. He is not off the leash; I don’t have the courage to do that. But he marks every lantana bush and looks longingly at garbage piles, while I try to explain the risk of infection. I am not looking forward to birdwatching though. It is getting hot and I expect all the winter migrants would have left. I feel a pang thinking that I didn’t see them off. But then I hear the familiar chak chak. The Blyth’s reed warbler is still here, enjoying the warm but not too hot sun. And at the fig tree, the fruits have gone but a few rosy starlings are still there. They are diminished in number but the ones that remain are in good spirits, looking happy to be here. Just like my silly dog.

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