Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

" BLACK birds, as a rule, are glossy. Look at the King-crow, the Racket-tailed Drongo, the Cock-koel and Robin - even the homely crows have a shine to their darkness, like a glace-kid shoe. Some black birds are even more fancy, the sheen of their plumage having a iridescence; the Hill-mynah's black is shot with flashes of purple and green, the little Sunbirds have a gem-like purple glow, and many other birds have a watchspring-blue gloss to their blackness.

But the cock Pied Bush-chat is not like that. Its black is shineless and gentlemanly, and sets off the patch of white in each wing and above the tail so neatly and brings out stubby little figure so trimly. Its mate is even more sober in attire, the colour of sun-baked, brown clay.

It is scrubby country, given to spiky, stony vistas framed by thorn-bush, that the Bush-chat likes best; and here it will often take up residence, with its mate, around one's home. So will many other birds, but I think that none of them can impart to a modest cottage set in a plot of wasteland and the same sense of cheer. I should know, having lived for years in such a dwelling.

For seven years, a pair of Pied Bush-chats lived close beside me, till I left. Each year they built their nest in the vicinity, in a cleft in the kitchen wall, in the roof of my goatshed, and once in the axle-hole of an enormous, handleless, stone roadroller that lay permanently unrolling on my wiry "lawn" - that brood, I remember, came to grief soon.

Robins, many Wagtails, Sparrows, Bulbuls, Sunbirds - all sorts of birds would come to the curious, low circular wall that enclosed my house or to the aloes and the few hardy bushes that I succeeded in cultivating.

But it was the Bush-chats that were the permanent residents and I was glad this was so; they were such quiet, self-assured and confiding tenants, unlike the giddy, fidgety visitors.

During summer and even during the cold weather (especially in December) the cock bush-chat would take its stance atop the terrace, or on a mast-like strip of plank from a packaging case that somehow came to adorn the roof of the goatshed, and sing his glad brief song - a loud clear rising whistle ending on a note of untamed sweetness.

Listening to it on a sultry afternoon, I have often felt convinced that there is more to birdsong than scientists know yet, and there are times when a bird sings merely because it can and feels like it.

I know that scientifically-minded people will shake their heads sadly over this little tribute to a lost friend; they will tell me that it is a projection of my own emotions, a sickly and unworthy sentimentality that is responsible for this note.

No matter. I knew these chats for years and they did not - and if science is the elimination of all feeling and perception and an unwillingness to believe what is not printed in a book, then I have no use for it."
-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 20 December 1953 in The Sunday Statesman

*A nice sketch of an Oriental Magpie Robin in b/w not reproduced here.