Sleeping parakeets!

Let me share an excitement of bird watching! To watch them in sleep!

The mid day is a good time to walk around  the garden to look for birds who are resting. After the flutter of activities in the morning to find feed and water, some birds would rest in tall trees.

The two parrots were asleep- one resting flat on a branch and the other curled up into a ball. I watched them in these still postures for a while.  Most birds have light sleep during the day. The mid day is a good time to observe the day time sleep habits of the birds. This is the third day I have noticed some parakeets resting on the same tamarind tree.

A gardener who seems to know a good deal about the birds mentioned to me that most birds occupy a tree during the day and night before they choose a place to make their nest during the mating season. Even the birds follow a pattern.

While talking to some students, I got a sense of their struggles to have an order and pattern to their daily living. For most of them, they cannot predict when their day would end and the night would begin! They do not plan, but others and circumstances decide for them their daily rhythm.

I am not sure, if it is a desirable thing for us to have an unplanned schedule for any day, even for our holidays. We as humans are inclined to be impulsive and decide instantly only to blame ourselves in hindsight, for the hurried decision we would have made.

There is a rhythm to life and living. Nature and its inhabitants follow it. Humans disregard that rhythm with little consciousness of its consequences. There is a proportion expected to be maintained  between the forested area and the space for human habitation and industry. There is at least 25 percent depletion of forested area and thirty percent increase in the human occupied land space. One reason for climatic changes of drought, cyclone, depletion of ground water, etc is attributable to the break down in the balance between forested and human occupied areas.

We need to reflect on this!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)