A Barbet joined a squirrel, and a Bulbul at the feeding station. Barbets are not sociable at the feeding station.
The last photo is another Barbet watching this from a cable wondering whether to join or not. It did not join but flew away.
I spot interesting sights almost each day in the bird behaviour!
The garden space offers space for birds to be themselves and relational.
The feeding table offers the invitation to be sociable towards each other!
The famous Salim Ali, the Orninthologist became bird friendly and later spent his life time describing bird behaviour following a terrible event in his childhood. Being from a hunting family and having had access to gun, he shot down a bird who had a yellow colour covering its neck. His uncle helped him to take the bird to the Bombay natural history museum, where the curator identified it as a rare sparrow. Salim was so disturbed by what he did that he dedicated his life to create nature parks to preserve bird life.
I have few books of Salim Ali and visited a nature park named in his memory about forty kilometres away from our village beside a lake and dam.
I have noticed that birds when offered a friendly environment, they surprise us by their gestures towards each other and even towards humans.
A garden when made into a home for birds, they become hospitable and sociable!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
