Hell Oh Entropy!

Life, Code and everything in between

Watching Birds

So this is my first non-technical post since I migrated all my stuff over to siddhesh.in. It’s not that there’s nothing interesting happening in my life - it’s just that I never felt the urge to write for a very long time. Now I do and I hope it continues for some time.

In the last few years, I developed a new hobby of photographing birds. I would collect bird feathers as a child with Milind and we would try to spot birds, without much success. In fact, without any success. I remember this one time we saw a large bird fly down from a cliff at National Park - we were on top of the cliff. We imagined that it was a rare golden bird - well, I was about 12 and Milind was 14. In hindsight, I guess the bird may have been a Black Kite with the sun right on it, but I’m going to stick to the description of a golden rare bird to preserve the memory of those days.

It’s not easy to spot birds, but all it takes though is one good birding trip and all of a sudden you see birds all over the place - out the office window, outside your home, while you’re walking, while you’re driving - everywhere. It’s not that they suddenly appeared - they were always there. It’s just that your eyes open up to this amazing new world, which is really not new at all.

So despite being able to see birds everywhere, why do we go birding to specific places? I guess the big reason is to get away from other humans and be with the birds - just the birds and you. It’s like they do all those special things just for you. I know it’s not true - that they really don’t even care about me unless I try to get too close - but it feels good to imagine that they like your company as much as you theirs.

It’s funny how this post has developed - I was going to write about a specific birding spot that doesn’t seem to be very popular and yet is in the heart of Pune. I think that will have to wait for another post…

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