Manikandan was extremely happy to see me this morning. Apparently, he had been very concerned with my whereabouts these past few days and was fearful that I had left the country without saying goodbye. I assured him I would never do such a thing and we still had over a week of tea together. I always thought I needed a dog to feel this loved every morning but apparently all I needed was a good barista.
As I was standing on my mound of dirt in the sea of garbage this morning, I spied two big gray blobs with big fat tails scurrying into the brush. I immediately perked up and reached for my binoculars. Upon viewing them I assumed they were just monkeys and dropped my binoculars in disgust. Monkeys are the worst. I looked over to Shyam nonchalantly and asked if I was current in my identification. He looked over and said "not monkeys, anteaters". ANTEATERS!!! This was the point at which I became a toddler on pixie stixs. I began to howl "Anteaaaaters, nooooo, come baaaaack". Shyam looked genuinely concerned. I am still bitter that I missed them.
My anguish was soon lessened when Shiva told me that he brought bananas to feed the cows. A day that starts with wet cow noses is my kind of day. The driver of the cow cart was genuinely amused by enthusiasm. For a country in which cows are sacred, I feel like I'm the only one who really appreciates them.
Today's bird is the Green Bee-eater. In the early days of the blog, I mistakenly thought they Blue-Tailed Bee-eaters. As it would turn out, they have no blue tails, just lots of green. Remember how we talked about birdwatching being kind of a shot in the dark? This is an example of that. Nevertheless, the Bee-eaters were MIA for a while, I was a little distraught because they're some of my favorites. The Bee-eaters, however, have made a reappearance, as in there are four times as many now.
Where the new hoard of Bee-eaters came from I couldn't tell you. I made this discovery today as I was watching one of the Bee-eaters fly around. Bee-eaters are very playful. They love to fly up quickly and then fall back until they're right at the lily pads, at which point they fly back up suddenly. I saw one such Bee-eater flying around like this, but when it started its ascent, ten more Bee-eaters followed. It was like a volcano of Green Bee-eaters exploded. Shyam and I watched in slack jawed, wide eyed amazement. Just when I think I know these birds, they surprise me.
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