Love is naturally a god’s gift, it is common for all life. As the saying goes, love is restricted not only to humans but also to all living creatures. Birds are one of the best examples of that. When I started to capture the pictures of birds, I noticed that some birds were sitting together. Even, they were flying together. So I planned to share my experience of sighting different pairs of birds in different places. Here I share my experience through the genre of birds photography.
I started to capture the photos of birds from the Periyar Tiger reserve forest. In the beginning, I went on a boat trip to Thekkadi Lake. At that place, I got some pictures of Large Cormorant and Snake birds. Suddenly my co-passengers sighted an elephant family. While they were active in watching those elephants, on the other side, I noticed two small birds sitting on a tree, and the name of that bird is Ashy Woodswallow.
As I mentioned above, usually these birds live together as a group. But in surprise I found a pair of Ashy Woodswallows sitting alone on a hollow tree. At the start, I thought they were waiting for their group. But for more than 15 minutes they were just sitting and chit-chatting with a tweeting sound. Within the next few minutes, they got disturbed and flew away by hearing our boat sound. Thereafter we moved away from there to catch up with more adoring avians.
After completing my boat trip; I started to walk in the pathway to come out of the national park. On the way I noticed two Female Orange Minivet sitting in a row on a branch of the tree. And one minivet shared her food with another one. At this time I recognized that humans are not the only ones having the habit of considering others as friends. Friendship is an effective way of treating others, and that is the social habit for all living creatures.
After Thekkadi, while I was coming back to my institute, I saw a pair of Blue-tailed Bee-eaters near the city. For the whole time, they were looking only in opposite directions. It seemed like they were frightened. And within a few minutes, one more pair came there. They were Western Yellow Wagtail. In contrast with the previous pair, they worked jointly to hunt some insects. Both of them undoubtedly got enough insects as food and they proved that teamwork never fails.
After a few days, I went to Tamilnadu for taking Architecture photography. Somewhere near Puthukkottai district, I sighted a pair of Pied Kingfishers. When I started to capture them, they completed their fishing. After capturing some of their pictures I moved from there. At that point on the way, I noticed a lovely pair of Black Drongo sitting on a tree. When I started to capture their pictures, they both started singing a song for me. Their song lasted for more than 10 minutes. And that is my first time to properly hear a bird’s song for that much time and that much closer. After a few minutes, I left that place.
When I went to Kabini to capture photographs of animals and adoring avians. Uniquely, I got pictures of some lovely pairs of birds like the Indian spot-billed Duck, Spotted Dove, Green Imperial Pigeon, and White neck Stroke. All of them move in pairs wherever they are going.
It is telling us that love is a gift by God, and it will exist even in the wild. Whenever I’m watching those birds, I’m exclaiming that love and friendship are not only restricted to humans. But also it is common for all the creatures in this world. Thereupon, the way of exposing may differ in adoring avians. Whether it is love or friendship, affection is unexceptional for every life.
Photographs & Text by Bharathi Murugan S.
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All the photos and text in this post are copyright of Bharathi Murugan S. Their reproduction, full or part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.