Birds of IIT-Jodhpur

Birding is one of the hobbies I have developed in the recent past. Being a biodiversity researcher, my approach is slightly different from usual birding. I love to quantify the diversity of birds in limited areas, mostly selecting a stretch. This has become an everyday activity (specially mornings) of my life. It is tedious, time taking and sometimes monotonous and yet so addictive and advantageously has added to my fitness regime. I started working on the bird diversity of IIT-Jodhpur campus since September 2019 and it amazed me how seasonal diversity can be so evident within such limited area. I am sure to write more about this in my upcoming posts. I have so far listed around 70 species of birds, some residential, some seasonal and few occasional visitors. A detailed post on this is also under future plan.

The covid-19 outbreak in 2020 did not have much affect on the campus or my work, but with the second wave, life has taken a pause. I have a love and hate relationship with loneliness, and this lock down it just bored it down to extreme hatred. Despite the presence of my entire family around me, giving birth to my second beautiful baby and being extremely busy with daily chores, this loneliness is so omnipresent and aching. Company of those birds that I had met along the journey have become an inseparable part of my bliss. I miss the everyday greetings passed to one another, the short talks and the long chases, the ignorant looks and the alarming calls, the shy peeps or the bold stares.

Numerous questions haunt me and the answers are uncertain. Will I ever again have the luxury of roaming and singing with them? Has mother nature healed a bit during lock down from the prolonged human destruction? Is it possible that she wouldn’t want to face us again in agony or is it that we are as much part of her and cannot be kept away? Are we the only ones missing the nature and creatures? Is the love and void not reciprocal? Do our good vibes too not reach them? Did the mother nature never blush once, or pat herself or may be smile with modesty at the scene of humans standing in awe, admiring her beauty? If true, she is undoubtedly missing me… I AM GOING TO COME BACK DEAR AND WE SHALL MEET AGAIN.