Nest building complete

The female does not bring any more material to the box . The nest bulding seems to be now complete.

A few days back , there was a big fight at the box between the mynas , sparrows and the magpies. The  electric pole seems to be the edge of the male's territory , with most of the battles being fought there… A pair of bramny starlings love to annoy the magpies . 

The male magpie dive bombs any bird that sits on the pole. Causes a lot of ruffled feathers.

We had a surprise visitor today , A shikra , most probably from a nest we know of from near by. Caused quite a stir among the pigeons and the garden birds.

Nesting Magpies

How do you tell a pair of Magpie Robins that the nesting box they have chosen is actually designed by the infinitely more intelligent humans for the Indian mynas?

A pair of magpies has started visiting the myna box in the balcony. I think the pair is not bonded properly as yet. The female keeps visiting the box with beak fulls of nesting material with the male keeping guard . But some times she just flies off with the rival male from the next building!

No pictures as yet. Waiting for the pair to settle down properly.

Need to put up more boxes .... now on the window grills

Plenty of Zebras

In the corner of the new garden, is a tangled bed of a flowering bush called as Blue Chitrak - Plumbago articulata. A native of South Africa ,the blue chitrak is a common garden plant .

 I had often seen the wild cousin of the blue chitrak , our very own white chitrak , Plumbago zeylanica , in the wild and sometimes around neglected hedges around city banglows .

The pretty butterflies are Zebra Blues , these too, I had seen plenty of times on the outskirts of the city .

What I had not bothered to do was to look up the books . Had I done that , I would not have been surprised to find a nice big bunch of zebra blues hanging around the Plumbago.

It's their host plant,shouts Wikipedia !

But then ,is not observing nature , be it in the jungles or in the garden , all about such wonderful surprises ?

Back to the jungle

We have just shifted to a new home ! The jungle in this garden is so much better.
Firstly it's now possible to have a look at the sky whenever I want. And there are two spathodia trees which are growing to our eye level, so no binocs needed to watch all the birds that love to roost there  . There is also a long hedge of bamboo and ficus in which I found a few of last seasons munia nests.Have not seen many butterflies though....

This garden definitely looks promising . Hope to write a lot about it...