True confessions of an amateur birder:

Itch to twitch

Aditha DISSANAYAKE

Finally they let me wander off on my own. All of them; the one who had wowed to share his whole life with me, the one who has had me in his life from the day he was born, and the one who had married him, and who now happens to be my best friend. All because I could not stay still.

It all happened when my tribe descended on us here in Talawakelle during the Christmas holidays, intent on identifying the warm blooded, egg laying vertebra of the up country region.

Even though I had already confessed my interests lay more on placental mammals, especially the kind known as Homo sapiens, they had generously included me too on their expeditions, whenever the sky cleared and the mist lifted, paving the way for a trek into the wilderness surrounding the Great Western mountain range.

The first scoop on the first of those rambles is mine. On one of the dirt roads leading to the Khovil half way up the mountain we come across an old lady called Mariamma who asks us if we are from Colombo.

When we say yes she asks if we live by the sea? “No.” With little prompting on our part she goes on to say she has never seen the sea in her whole life but when her grandson who works in a shop in Wellawatta next comes home on vacation he has promised to take her back to Colombo with him to show her the sea. She clasps her hands together in anticipation. Her smile is a sight to behold. I want to linger on, listen to her a bit more, take her photo. But my clan thinks otherwise.

We move on, and the second scoop too happens to be mine. Up above us, on a grey-blue sky I see two smooth, brown gliders. “Vultures!” but my exclamation is “Shhhh-shhhhhhed”. “Eagles” everyone is eager to correct me. I am indignant at first. How can they be so sure from so far away? Elementary Mr. Watson. “Vultures are not found in Sri Lanka”.

As we advance further into the scrub land I try to recall the bits of information I had read on the internet the previous day hoping I could hide my ignorance by spotting and identifying a rare bird which the others would not even have dreamt of seeing in these parts of the country. But my attempts had not been as successful as I had envisioned.

There were so many unfamiliar words in most of the articles I read I had been busy looking up the meaning of words than reading about the individual characteristics of say, the crested eagle and the vulture. One guide said “silhouettes of eagles flatten out, while the wings of vultures show a dihedral curve.”

But the moment of letting me go off on my own had come not because of my poor identification skills but because of my inability to stay still. Through out the two hours I had trekked behind my kinsmen turned birders, I had not been able to master the discipline of standing still for more than a few seconds at a time.

Was that cold, slimy feeling on my knee the sign of a leech? Who is that crawling down my neck? An anaconda? By the time I had satisfied myself that my leg had only been rubbing against a wild lilly and that it was a stray strand of my own hair that had slid down my neck, the bird had flown from its perch. Sure, I too had been listening for a flutter, ready to see something astonishing, but is it my fault that the moment I saw it, it decides to go away?

You have to have patience they tell me. You have to heed the advice of the yogis. “Sit still, so still, that a bird can land on your head”. I am not sure I would want that. So, off I go, on my own from now on.

An outcast from my flock, having ruffled too many feathers. I hope I will come across Mariamma again. Not to have seen the sea in all of her sixty six odd years on planet earth? Surely that’s better than spotting a vulture with a dihedral curve, or is that only a crow yonder on the avocado tree? You tell me.

Pictures by Raditha Dissanayake