Kingfisher in the canal

It's been a while since I wrote last. But this morning, an unusual sight (for me anyway) resulted in this post. Nope, sorry, I don't have a picture of this unusual sight.

On the road linking Sarjapur to the Hosur Road, an open sewage canal runs alongside. Several Brahmini kites and paraiah (black) kites populate this place and share space along with mynahs and crows.

A flash sighting of a bird ducking into one of the holes lining the canal caught my attention. It had to be a bird but what kind? The white wing markings caught the sun as the bird ducked out, hovered for a second as though evicted by the landlord and returned into the hole again. That's when I caught sight of the iridiscent blue on the wing. It was a whitebreasted kingfisher.

I wasn't quite sure even at that point. Traffic roared by. Unseeing throngs passed, hurrying off to their work places or waited to catch their buses, trucks hooted and honked, autorickshaws bawled as their tiny engines strove to catch up with the rest of the world speeding by. I was lucky to be at the traffic light. Just as the lights turned green, the kingfisher sped out of the hole in the wall and alighted on the fence in patient repose. A beautiful sight and one missed by many, I'm sure.

I wished I had my camera with me.

On the Bangalore Birds forum, several people have been debating the adaptation of birds to the urban landscape. They were talking about parakeets but here was another adaptor that was using what was immediately available, the drain hole that empties rain water into the sewage canal.