It’s a cloudy day and I am thrilled, very thrilled. During my many years in Chennai I always looked forward to the rains, which hardly came. The city is mostly dry, hot and humid except during Jan and Feb. So a chance of getting rinsed under the mighty gray sky was a form of immense happiness for me. Every year there would be a depression in the Bay of Bengal, which shades the city for a few days but the rains never drop to a point where you can enjoy them. Still, I immediately call my close friends and ask for a rendezvous at my favourite joint – the beach.

It has been two years now since I moved to a new city. One of the best things this city has offered me besides the gardens is the pleasant weather. With the clouds moving towards their destination today, I thought why not head to the local garden and look at some of its shy inhabitants and their noisy Neighbors. I quickly tied my hair, wore my sneakers, a multi-pocketed jacket and rode off in a span of ten minutes. Upon reaching the place, I walked besides the lake hoping to catch a water bird either diving or flying when I heard a strange new sound. Though it was feeble, I strained my ears to the sounds direction and neared it. After flexing my head up and down, left and right I spotted this bird of two colours.

It’s an eagle. That’s what I guessed. Years back, I saw a program on NGC where a mother eagle had to fish and feed her young. Though some of the scenes were disturbing in the perspective of a hardcore vegetarian, I continued watching it. Assuming the bird to be an eagle, I was so intrigued and thrilled by this two-legged stranger. I kept staring at it, praying for it to stay still. Surprisingly, it didn’t move a muscle. It appeared to be relaxing and later stretching its feathers while taking a Peek at me multiple times amidst all its antics. In between, it also managed to go for a quick flight only to return to a spot close to me. This gave me ample time to fetch for my camera and quickly capture it in my lens.

Elated, I came home after spending three hours walking around and enjoying every bit of my time. I transferred the pictures to my laptop quickly to show todays new finding to my husband only to find out that it’s not an eagle. He thought it must be a kite or a hawk while I still argued about it being an eagle. Anyway, to confirm I had to Google and he was right. So what is it then – a kite or a hawk? Wikipedia is one of the regular sites I go to find answers, detailed ones. It displayed the desired page containing a long list of birds but without images. The lists were linked. This meant that I had to click each link to open a new page and learn about the species. I did just that. An hour went in and I finally found that it’s a Brahminy Kite.