A Fairy it is, a Dragon not!

Who’d have thought some chance pictures would make me a believer! I'd been tracking a pair of sunbirds as they went about setting up home and I discovered it took some agility and a whole lot of patience to get a few decent close-ups.  Sometimes as I waited, I’d snap random stuff for fun—an entire series of raindrops on leaves, flowers and wires (they looked like little fairy lights, I swear!), gossamer cobwebs billowing from withered branches and even a thorny hedge, I thought, managed to form some interesting symmetry through my lens.

I spied a dragonfly on the wall on one such wait and shot it carelessly.  It was rather plain looking and blended in almost completely with the water-stained garden wall.  I was pretty sure I’d end up deleting the pictures. After a long wait I was eventually rewarded with some fantastic footage of my feathered friends in all their splendid glory and I couldn’t wait to download and admire my latest cache!

Whoa! The birds looked great but who was this magical nymph that leapt out of my screen with delicate shimmering wings that I didn’t recognize! Was it the same dragonfly that I wasn’t interested in, at first? I was fascinated now!

My trusted friend, Google, told me that this species was called the Granite Ghost or the Indian Rockdweller and they were useful in keeping the vicious Aedes mosquito and other pesky insects at bay in a habitation. Beautiful and noble! I couldn’t stop gazing at the jeweled perfection that was its wings. Copper tints gave them a burnished stained-glass appearance and I wished I were a better photographer to capture their beauty flawlessly.

Confucius was an insightful man indeed when he said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see it.”  Well, I promise to keep looking for the beauty that abounds in everything everywhere.

Framed and Shot!

I’ve been birdwatching lately. The Bougainvillea in front of the house had tangled itself wildly in the overhead cables causing power disruptions and had to be trimmed down last week. The gardener had left a dried up branch still stuck in the cables and a pair of tiny purple-rumped sunbirds promptly decided to build their home on it—a very unwise choice for a number of reasons entailing security but hey, they were offering me a ringside view of their life's construction! 

Armed with a camera, I stalk them from my balcony. Mr. Sunbird is the prettier one with flashy maroon, purple and blue-green trim on his yellow jacket while the Missus wears a somber yellow and ash grey coat with olive tints. I note that he only makes fleeting supervisory visits, chirruping instructions as he hovers at the fringes while she toils unstintingly in building their home. She makes at least a million trips for supplies and without any fanfare. I snarkily wonder whether this is the only nest Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky Sunbird is supervising but then remember reading somewhere that his particular species is supposed to be monogamous!

The nest is beginning to look like a raggedy pouch now—wispy feathers, straw and fiber, some paper and dried leaves—all protrude in an untidy mess.  My rapidly growing picture album tracks the various stages of its progress. I shoot the other inquisitive visitors who flit by to inspect the nest-building as well. A pair of fat LBDs (little brown doves), some noisy bulbuls, a couple of perky oriental white-eyes and an ashy prinia that bounces around annoyingly. 

There are the crows and parrots that throw quite a boisterous party in the neighboring trees and I’d love to train the camera on them someday soon. In the meantime, there's this cat that has caught my lens!