Better than all treasures that in books are found...

Ramya Coushik lives the slow life, listens to birdsong, watches them flit about and unabashedly abandons her reading.

The patio of our cottage at Navilu Kaadu is spacious, nearly the same size as the little cottage itself. An awning held in place by a lattice of hollow metal pipes shelters the patio.

A drumstick tree and a pair of young neem trees flank the house on either side. We have a Mysore trumpet vine spreading over a bamboo trellis beyond the awning, and a violet allamanda creeping up the metal pole on one side of the patio.

Whenever I get a breather from the hectic farm schedule, I sit on the patio with a book, my binoculars and a camera stationed by my side. Guess which ones get used more!

Winged faunae pose a serious impediment to my reading pursuits on the farm. I barely get through a paragraph when I am distracted by the trill of a bee-eater, the wispy melody of a lark or the soft tsee-tseeing of a sunbird, and compulsively pick up one of my two optical gizmos.

Purple-rumped sunbirds (Leptocoma zeylonica) hunt for nectar among the sparse blooms of our young Mysore trumpet vine. They dip their long, downward-curved beaks into the tubular red-yellow blossoms to suck.

These birds display sexual dimorphism, which means the males and the females of the same species are as different as chalk and cheese. The males are dazzling and wear a metallic green crown and shoulder patch with a purple throat, a deep rust mantle and a purple rump with custard-yellow underparts.

They glisten like jewels in the sunlight. The females are plain by comparison, with dull grey-brown bodies and pale-yellow underparts.

In December 2019, a pair of scaley-breasted munias (Lonchura punctulata) made a nest under the eaves of the cottage, right over our main door. These sparrow-sized birds have chocolate-brown upper parts with black speckles on a white chest, akin to scales, hence the name. Their stout conical beaks are designed for a diet rich in grass seeds. Munias relish insects too, making them granivorous and insectivorous birds. The charming couple flitted between the drumstick tree and the awning as they gave finishing touches to their brand-new nest. The male is usually a shade darker than the female. The pair may have laid a clutch of four to eight eggs.

In July 2020, another cute finch species, a pair of Indian silverbills (Euodice malabarica), occupied the same nest. It was the season of rose natal grass, and the male bird wooing his lady love with a gift of a single blade of delicate pink-hued grass clasped in his pale-grey beak, made for an ethereal sight. They are also called white-throated munias.

Like all finches, these little birds too are equipped with short, stout beaks and feed on seeds and insects. Silverbills are monomorphic, meaning both genders of the species look alike. They are known to be communal nesters, and there is a likelihood that the eggs in a nest could belong to more than one silverbill mom.

In early April this year, as I sat at the patio making a valiant attempt to read, yet another feathered diversion flitted about. This time, a cinereous tit (Parus cinereus) busily explored one end of the hollow metal pipe holding up the awning.

The bird plucked dried grass from the ground, flew to the Neem tree and sat on a slender branch for a couple of seconds. It then made the short dash to the metal pipe by the tree, balancing on deft wings as it stuffed the grass into the hollow of the pipe.

Just as our cottage houses us, its nooks and crannies hold many an avian ménage.

With absorbing natural history moments such as these being enacted all day at Navilu Kaadu, am I to be chided for abandoning my book for the camera?

Rooting For Nature is a monthly column on an off-kilter urban family’s trysts with nature on a natural farm.

The author chipped away at a software marketing career before shifting gears to independent consulting and natural farming. She posts as @ramyacoushik on Instagram. Reach her at [e-mail]