Wire tailed Swallow

Wire tailed Swallow have a characteristic long wire like shaft to the outer pair of tail-feathers. Sexes are alike, except that the wire is shorter in the female. Top of the head bright chestnut ; sides of the head and neck and the whole upper plumage glossy steel-blue. Invariably found near water these birds are fond of canals, the above was spotted around the canal in Srirangapatanam (near Mysuru). They perch on power lines, bridge parapet and as a rule avoid perching on trees. They descend on ground only to collect mud for nest that is made under the culverts of bridge or under roof or under shelves of rock. These birds are also known to feed the young on flight.

Li Po: The living is a passing traveler

Li Po was an ancient Chinese poet (tang poet), he was referred to as ‘wandering poet’ as he traveled various places and wrote poems, later he found favor with imperial court but court plotter worked against him and he found himself arrested and sentenced to death that was later commuted to banishment. He became a Taoist, his poems reflected the nuances of human relation as also abundance of Nature.

He was a close friend of the poet Du Fu, to whom he addressed the following lines:

Here! is this you on the top of Fan-kuo Mountain,

Wearing a huge hat in the noon-day sun?

How thin, how wretchedly thin, you have grown!

You must have been suffering from poetry again.

Chuang Tzu and the Butterfly

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,

And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.

Which was the real—the butterfly or the man?

Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?

The water that flows into the depth of the distant sea

Returns in time to the shallows of a transparent stream.

The man, raising melons outside the green gate of the city,

Was once the Prince of the East Hill.

So must rank and riches vanish.

You know it, still you toil and toil—what for?

The Old Dust

The living is a passing traveler;

The dead, a man come home.

One brief journey between heaven and earth,

Then, alas! we are the same old dust of ten thousand ages.

The rabbit in the moon pounds the elixir in vain;

Fu-sang, the tree of immortality, has crumbled to kindling wood.

Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word

While the green pines feel the coming of the spring.

Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.

What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?

These lines from the poem Nefarious War

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;

The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,

While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,

Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.

So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,

And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms

Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns