It is a very rare to see night heron hunting in the daylight, they generally laze around the day and active at dusk through the night, so it was a pleasant surprise to see this bird hunched (its typical posture), alternatively stretching out its neck and concentrating on its prey on a bright morning at lal bagh lake (Bangalore). I had postponed photographing black-crowned night heron for later date when I get a better lens since daytime it rests on faraway branche
s and canopies (the latest is I am having some serious near misses at turf club, one of these days I am going to hit the money pot, then for lens, laptop!!) next to marshes making it difficult to photograph. Black-crowned night-heron has a scientific name Nycticorax nycticorax, which literally means ‘night raven’ in Greek. Night obviously for its nocturnal feeding habits, the second half of the name has a corvid connection not in relation but the vocal similarity to guttural calls of raven. Adult black-crowned night-herons have black caps and back therefore the name.Black-crowned night-heron are unlike any herons as they have short neck and legs, this stocky bird has long thick black bill. Hunting technique is standing still (let me add unnaturally still) at water edge to ambush prey. They are also known to employs another hunting techniq
ue called ‘bill vibrating’, whereby it opens and closes its bill rapidly in water and hunts upon any small creature attracted to the disturbance. These birds are solitary hunters but gregarious in their nesting colonies shared by other birds however they have the tendency to steal eggs and young hatchlings during breeding season, the reason why black-crowned night-heron is disliked by other species of herons. They do their best to discourage this heron from nesting in their colonies. The flight of the Night Heron is steady, slow and protracted.
White-eared Night Heron a Chinese bird listed on the IUCN Red List as one of the world’s most endangered species. The white-ear even made the list of the Fifty Rarest Birds of the World (the painting is from Audobon collection and stamp from Sri Lanka).
I was going through the Net and found that Judith Wright had written a poem "Night Herons"; despite many hours of scrounging through the net I just couldn’t locate it. I hope someone would download it at the earliest. Judith Wright has written 
many poems on birds and wildlife. In her poem “Birds” (1953) she writes “all are what bird is and do not reach beyond the bird” she ends the poem with the line “Be simple to myself as the bird is to the bird.”
many poems on birds and wildlife. In her poem “Birds” (1953) she writes “all are what bird is and do not reach beyond the bird” she ends the poem with the line “Be simple to myself as the bird is to the bird.”
Judith Wright was a prolific Australian poet, critic, and short-story writer, an uncompromising environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. In her essay 'The Writer and the Crisis', she quotes the following from poet Francis Ponge: You have but to fix your attention on the first object to hand; you will see immediately that no-one has ever examined it, and that the most elementary things about it remain to be said ... I propose ... the opening of trap-doors in the inner self ... an invasion of qualities ... Thus the best path to take is to consider all things as unknown...and begin again from the beginning.
Writes Wright in mid-1950s: "The two threads of my life, the love of the land itself and the deep unease over the fate of its original people, were beginning to twine together, and the rest of my life would be influenced by that connection”. These lines from “Australia 1970”
I praise the scoring drought, the flying dust
the drying creek, the furious animal,
that they oppose us still;
that we are ruined by the thing we kill.
"In The Two Faces" (1955) she took Hiroshima as an example of man's power to destroy even the cycles of nature. These lines from “Notes at Edge”…
the drying creek, the furious animal,
that they oppose us still;
that we are ruined by the thing we kill.
"In The Two Faces" (1955) she took Hiroshima as an example of man's power to destroy even the cycles of nature. These lines from “Notes at Edge”…
Rhyme, my old cymbal, I don't clash you as often, or trust your old promises music and unison. I used to love Keats, Blake; now I try haiku for its honed brevities, its inclusive silences.
Last few days I have been reading and re-reading some of the poems and essay she wrote (as also blogs of her admirers), I think she was incredible and so wrote this poem for her endearing memory.
Role play
Uncertain discordant echoes, chaotic new
path,
languid past diminishing like shadows in
flickering candles.
Conceded space encroached by strangers
who speak idiom
I find difficult to understand.
These days every thought seems to be
slipping
into abyss so deep
I cannot retrieve.
Is it loss of words, the language?
An old woman from past once said
alphabets don’t construct words
it is the thoughts
(a critique on western model of development: it is not what you build but thoughts behind the building)
