The Living Air: Read an excerpt from the book on birding by Aasheesh Pittie
What’s the best way to ease oneself into the world of birds? An excerpt from a chapter titled My Kind of Birding.
Birdwatching, in its essence, is the fine art of becoming invisible – of merging into the surroundings in such a way that the breath which nature has held back upon your entry into its parlour is joyfully exhaled and normal respiration restored; in such a way that the frozen statues of animate wildlife, interrupted by your brashness, are coaxed into resuming their activities; in such a way that your aural and visual senses are drenched with the buoyancy of life; in such a way that you find a way outside yourself and become a part of the pageant around you.
This does require the cultivation of a patience that slows down your pace to that of the elemental cycles dominating the flow of life in an immaculate world run entirely without human help. It requires the marshalling and realigning of vision and a new focus of hearing so that you absorb every single sound and identify its source and gradually its nuances, its cadenzas. It demands a preoccupation with stillness.
What are the rewards of this exercise? I can think of at least two that will last you a lifetime. One, you will begin to notice things about your surroundings that you never knew existed, bringing you immediate, immeasurable joy. Two, your restless inner dynamo will wind down to such an extent that you discover a quietude, a stillness within you; a fount for a fresh view of your surroundings, a new approach to life based on re-energized sensitivities.
In the field, this approach opens the doors of a new world to your mind’s eye. You remain standing in front of a fruiting neem, while the larger group of birders moves on, having identified one or two species. You inhale the aroma of its foliage. A fluty whistle from its canopy leads your eye to the Iora. He is dressed in breeding regalia – a jet cap and coat, deep canary shirt, white epaulettes. He courts a hen Iora with song, he postures, he patrols; his aria persuades her and dissuades rivals from his territory. You do not exist in his scheme of things, just in your own sensory world, as a witness. You stay with him as he perambulates through the leafy canopy, lifting his warbling beak skyward, fluffing his velvet beret, vibrating his dark tail, standing on tiptoe in the fervour of his operatic song. You are trapped by its intensity. You are mesmerized by its elemental simplicity, by the realization that the Iora’s entire world, in that moment, is its song, and that he has enmeshed you in it, albeit momentarily, till your focus expands to take in the larger picture – the shining curved leaves of the neem, the soft yellow fruit pods, the darkened bark, damp from last night’s rain, the tangled undergrowth.
You spy a movement from the corner of your eye and realize it is an Ashy Prinia that’s flown into the Iora’s neem, and you stay with it. As your senses expand, your absorption of the drama around you becomes acute and before you are aware of it, you are invisible to yourself, a part of the very landscape you’ve come to partake of, all eyes and ears, inhaling its scents, feeling it on your skin. If you become aware of yourself, the spell is broken and the pageant melts away into simple, mundane, two-dimensionality. The trick is to make yourself invisible, while remaining completely present in your surroundings.
Now you are on the path to my kind of birding.
(Excerpted with permission from The Living Air: The Pleasures of Birds and Birding by Aasheesh Pittie, published by Indian Pitta; 2023)
