A spring evening

Here are two pictures of Sun birds and I did not have to go anywhere farther than my garden to get these shots. A couple of days ago I heard a squirrel calling repeatedly. I stepped out to my back lawn and saw that the cat who comes in occasionally for a drink of milk(nothing else will do and will be rejected outright) had after a meal decided to catch a 'cat nap' in my pot of basil. The squirrel for reasons only to herself did not appreciate this and continued to scold the cat for quite some time. So I got the opportunity to click them both.

As I did not seem to be disturbing either the cat or the squirrel I turned my attention to some more chirping around. Had been hearing a lot for the last week. First spotted the male sitting high on the tree and then captured the female sunbird with a bit of feather/down in her beak. That caught my eye and so I stood waiting to try and see where she was heading. In the meanwhile Nitin managed to get a good picture of the male with all his plumage. Since I had been shooting against the light my pictures did'nt do justice to its wonderful colouring.

Today armed with the camera I spent a fruitless half hour searching the bushes for the nest. Then gave it up as a bad job and decided to wait for the pair to turn up again. Had to do a bit of running to and fro - wait for the bird to go into the bushes and then run and try to see them from the bathroom and last room window - and finally saw it. In the picture above, the nest seems big but actually it is small and I had dismissed it for garbage hanging from the bushes when I had gone to look for it earlier. That's some camouflage..... I saw it but did not see it for what it was. Why do we call them bird brains!!! That's one smart bird.

I am also including another picture of the sleeping cat after the squirrel went away and all was at peace.

A white brested kingfisher was also attracted to by all this activity and was duly captured by Nitin. The sky was pretty too with both the setting sun and the moon keeping us company. All in all A very nice evening.

I think I should call this piece " The birds make merry while the cat sleeps".