theColourfulWings

A Morning Walk in Kashmir: My Daily Rendezvous with the Birds There’s something magical about waking up before the sun in Kashmir. The air is crisp, the mountains still wear their night caps of mist, and the world feels untouched. I slip out of the house around 5:30 in summer (a little later in winter when it’s too cold to feel my fingers), pull on a pheran or a light jacket, and head towards the boulevards, the old Mughal gardens, or simply along the bund by Dal Lake. What pulls me out every single day isn’t fitness or routine; it’s the birds. Kashmir, tucked in the lap of the Himalayas, is a paradise people usually praise for its lakes and chinar trees, but for me, mornings belong to the winged residents. Here’s my usual roll-call on an ordinary walk between Nishat and Shalimar, or sometimes deeper into the Hariparbat side and Dachigam fringes. 1. The Early Choir – Bulbuls and Sparrows The moment the first pale light touches the poplars, the Red-vented Bulbuls start. Thei...

The Little Blue Jewel of the Wetlands: My Winter Guest from Siberia There’s a small wetland patch just behind the police headquarters in my city, an unlikely oasis sandwiched between a busy road, a row of government buildings, and a parking lot full of white Boleros with red-blue lights. Most people hurry past it without a second glance. I, however, stop almost every winter morning, because that’s when he arrives: a stunning little blue bird that looks like someone dropped a shard of Siberian sky right into our muddy marshes. He is a Bluethroat (Luscinia svecica), one of the most beautiful winter visitors we get in India. And every year, sometime in late October or early November, a few of them leave the vast tundra and taiga of Siberia and northern Russia and fly over 5,000 kilometres to spend the cold months with us. The first time I saw him, I almost couldn’t believe the colour. The male Bluethroat in winter plumage still carries that electric blue throat and chest, edge...