What happens when green cover depletes in cities | Eye News,The Indian Express
Even as Maharashtra's green cover is shrinking, an amateur birdwatcher fears the erasure of his neighbourhood avian population
By Sidharth Singh
Every morning, I sit with a cup of chai by the window in my living room and the first few things I notice are the trees, the sky beyond their canopies and the dappled sunlight. But somewhere, the eye catches a blur of movement and the ears follow the sweetness of sound, to arrive at the daily sightings of resident birds in the neighbourhood.
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Crows rule this domain in the Mumbai suburb of Khar, a low-lying marshland that was once used for fishing and salt production. Their murderous caws ebb and flow through the day, keeping other birds away from accessing the offerings of the earth. Then there is a family of pigeons nested in the balcony above. A friend once aptly described pigeons as “rodents of the sky”.
Adjoining the palm grove is a pickleball court that is painted bright blue. It sits in a depression, surrounded by trees and must give the impression of a waterbody from the air, which is probably why the white-breasted kingfisher is a regular visitor. I’m usually greeted by a flash of blue, white and orange amidst the lower branches of the badam (country almond) tree as the kingfisher conducts its sly surveillance of the area. In the monsoon, it’s virtually a lake, then the kingfisher dominates.
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