Early morning as I was going for a walk, in my path was this huge bird....a kite...lying dead with folded wings.....kites have always been my favourite birds...many are the childhood days I have watched them gliding gracefully high above the tumult of daily life....serene and unconcerned...set me thinking about the birds in my life..
Jonathan Livingston Seagull... "the gull sees farthest who flies highest"...the most amazing book which in many ways has shaped my thinking from my teenage days...If you haven't read it get your copy NOW..
The parrots who come outside my window every morning....their startling vivid green..and red-rimmed eyes...the birds who come to feed on the crumbs and seeds we keep for them outside our window in Doha...I personally can identify more than a dozen of the regulars..mynas, pigeons, bulbuls, sparrows...by their markings or missing toes or plucked out feathers...
The birds we had when we were in Abu Dhabi.....where we had a huge walk-in enclosure...as big as our hall in Bombay but with a higher ceiling....with trees and plants ....we had a canary that used to fly in our house all over....no points for guessing what he was named....i still remember the sad plight of the birds we used to buy and bring home....initially we would keep them in a cage so that they could find the seeds and be protected from the other birds...but even though the cage doors were always open....they were so used to being in a cage all their lives they would not realize they had the freedom to leave and sometimes take more than a week to emerge....a lesson for us who are so stuck with our problems in life we don't see how easy it is to be free of them...the way out is always there ...we just have to see it...
they would sometimes just drop down to the ground ...not enough strength to fly...and slowly within weeks get back to doing what they were always meant to do...
Where is the joy in a bird that cannot fly
Up,up, n up in the bright blue sky...
At night the birds would pair up on the branches...a lovely sight...few of the birds would escape through holes in the netting during the day but would faithfully come back home at night!!!!..was a bit like having your cake and eating it too..
saw first hand nests being made, eggs being laid and hatched...budgies being born, getting their colourful feathers and learning how to fly....nature is the best teacher...
If you have a caged bird....set it free...if it comes back to you it is yours ...if it doesn't it never was...
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