In the quiet darkness of early March, in a small village in Oxfordshire, a Blackbird sang its loudest, clearest song. I woke up startled and drew open the curtains to find myself looking into the garden of my new home. It was my first morning in England and I was still drowsy from the previous day’s 10-hour flight from India. A thin layer of frost covered the grass.
A bird, presumably the performer, hopped on the ground. It looked at me with its yellow-ringed eye and produced a series of musical notes: choonks and chinks and cheeps, ending with a flourish and a pause, as though waiting for applause. If my partner hadn’t been sleeping through this, having grown accustomed to it over the last six years he’d been here, I might have clapped with enthusiasm. A row of smaller birds – Robins and House Sparrows – sat on the fence, chirping softly. I stared at them, sleepy and heavy-eyed, unused to this avian symphony. I drew the curtains and went back to sleep.
Little did I know that over the next few years, this morning routine would become something of a ritual. While my body clock struggled to recalibrate to this new time zone, I would wake up at 3 am to the dawn chorus (or cacophony, should we say). I watched my feathered friends hunt for worms while I sipped coffee. When the sun was in the sky, my partner left for work, the birds left the garden and I sat by myself at the dining table with my laptop, job-hunting furiously.
Every evening, when the sun went down, the birds came back. Watching the birds every morning and evening gave my jetlagged days a sense of structure. My first few weeks in the UK gave me the opportunity to listen, and really listen to birdsong.
When we moved to a bigger town, our house came with a patch of grass. I got a bird feeder, filled it with suet balls and hung it on a nail in the fence. For a few days, nothing happened. But one day I looked out to see a long row of sparrows on the fence, each taking their turn on the feeder. Another day: a flash of blue and yellow: a Blue Tit! Over the next 18 months I learned to identify common garden birds: magpies, blackbirds, robins, and sparrows.
I was frequently homesick and missed the chaos of the city I grew up in, but here, I found comfort in the company of birds.
I was frequently homesick and missed the chaos of the city I grew up in, but here, I found comfort in the company of birds. When I started noticing them, they seemed to follow me everywhere. They were just there, in front of me – like some kind of godsend, a replacement to make up for the absence of humans.
I went to the town centre, where a Pied Wagtail walked alongside me, bobbing its tail up and down. A Wood-pigeon cooed at me from a tree as I passed. Robins hopped up to me when I walked in the park. I took these as signs that everything was going to be okay.
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Getting to know birds in the UK
Birding carried me through being frequently uprooted and replanted in different places in the UK. In Loughborough, we lived in a sprawling home with an equally enormous garden. Here, I spent all day observing bird behaviour. In spring, I watched pigeons and blackbirds carry twigs to their nests, and parents feed their chicks. In the summer, an old pan served as the perfect bird bath: robins and tits and magpies drank and bathed in it.
Birding carried me through being frequently uprooted and replanted in different places in the UK
One particularly hot summer afternoon I looked out to find that a Blackbird was on the ground, wings splayed, with its mouth facing upwards, eyes half closed. It seemed to be in some kind of delirium. Was it injured? Was it dead? I panicked. A quick Google search told me that it was just “sunbathing”. It definitely looked like it was enjoying itself.
Here, in the Midlands, I also discovered new species of birds. Nuthatches. Green Woodpeckers. Greenfinches. Bullfinches. Chiffchaffs. All of them visited our feeder. Inevitably, we had a new visitor to the feeder: a Grey Squirrel. We named him Anil Kumar (Anil being the Tamil word for squirrel).
Every bird seemed to come with its own unique personality. The Dunnock was endearingly shy: it sometimes took a good half an hour to creep out from under the shed and towards the ground feeder, nervously looking around at every step. The Wren seemed to be a sprightly morning person, such a tiny bird with such a loud call. Magpies were authoritative and bossy: once, I watched two magpies scare away the neighbour’s cat, hopping beside it and squawking loudly until it left our garden.
At some point, I started finding that I could decipher birdspeak: “Go home now, go hooome,” the Wood-pigeon seemed to say. The pheasant’s call always reminded me of my mother’s sneeze: sudden and echoing. The Greenfinch alarm call had an electric quality about it: like the hum of rechargeable batteries plugged in. “Teacher teacher,” the Great Tit called. The loud, confident notes of the Song Thrush reminded me of the fluty notes of the Malabar Whistling-thrush back home, but more varied and unpredictable.
Birding became something I pursued at my own pace and without company: I enjoyed the isolated, meditative nature of it, I relished it like a secret I was keeping. I was struggling to find my footing in a new place and nature had delivered something beautiful on my doorstep. I felt like joining a community would ruin the fun of discovering things slowly, by myself. I was in no hurry. There’s a certain kind of excitement in not knowing much about something: everything about it fascinates you.
Birding became something I pursued at my own pace and without company: I enjoyed the isolated, meditative nature of it, I relished it like a secret I was keeping.
Revisiting India
When I visited India, I realised that my ear picked up new things from a soundscape that I thought I knew well. The sounds I associated with home were the temple bells, the azaan from the mosque, the sound of the neighbour’s pressure-cooker, the sound of welding so common in Indian cities, the apartment lift announcing “Please close the door”.
But now I heard new sounds that punctuated the everyday humdrum. There, a Tailorbird. And shush, can you hear the Shikra? In the evenings, especially before it rained, the sound of a Common Hawk-cuckoo. One day I heard the familiar screech of a Black Kite… but something was different about it. I went to the balcony to see an Indian Grey Hornbill sitting on the branches of the neem tree. Suddenly, birds were accessible.
I had been on birding trips before in the Western Ghats: these typically involved going into the forest in a jeep with binoculars, and trying to spot Blue-faced Malkohas and Yellow-footed Green Pigeons. But “balcony-birding” made me realise that I didn’t have to go so far to feel uplifted.
I took it too far one day though. I stood at our dining table, listening carefully to a sound that seemed to emanate from the mango tree. Was that a tailorbird? I whispered to mom. Or a squirrel chirping? I couldn’t place my finger on it. A series of regular, high pitched beeps. My mother gave me a strange look and said, “It’s the sound of a car reversing!”
Finding home through birding
In Cambridge, my partner and I finally put down roots. Birding got me through the lockdown years. I went with my binoculars early in the morning, looking up pines and beech and chestnut trees. To my surprise, I found a few other folks doing the same! In our local park, a pair of swans had seven chicks: and we all fussed over them like you would over human newborns. This shared fascination gave us a real sense of community.
On one of my lowest days during the pandemic, riddled with anxiety about the well-being of my folks in India, I took a walk in the park. I heard a drumming noise and looked up into the chestnut leaves to find a pair of Great Spotted Woodpeckers. I’d only ever heard woodpeckers before in the misty forests back home. Overcome, I wept.
I started to develop a mental map of the birds in Cambridge. When I took a walk at lunch near my office, I knew it was likely I would see a Yellowhammer. By the river: Moorhens, Gulls, Mallards, and sometimes an Egret. In the Cherry Hinton chalk pits: Kestrels, Harriers, Hawks, Buzzards. I couldn’t believe I had been oblivious to these living beings before.
Birding offered a different route to discovering my surroundings, a way to really bond with the land I was in. It offered a broader perspective: learning about migration and birds that travel thousands of miles for different seasons, I began to reframe my own journey across the seas. Weren’t we all sharing this one big home?
Birding offered a different route to discovering my surroundings, a way to really bond with the land I was in
I now know the screech of the swifts near the University Zoology building when they arrive in summer. I know the tree near the park in which starlings perch on summer evenings. I know (and love!) the twittering of Goldfinches in late summer as they dart in and out of the trees, even as autumn turns the leaves brown and red. I know the Long-tailed Tit that I always spot in the parking lot on Mill Road. I always look up at the King’s College spires to see if I can spot the Peregrine Falcons. I’ve developed a relationship with this city through its birds – and what a way to make acquaintance of a place!
Before I paid any real attention to birds, my life was fairly predictable: I filled the gap between day and night as we are expected to. I now do the same thing, but set to the soundtrack of birdsong and the excitement of sharing this space with creatures that have been around longer than we have.
When I visit a new place, one of the first things I do is learn about the birds I might hear or spot. Wherever I find myself in the world, I carry with me a sense of anticipation: I’m always ready to be surprised. Birding has given me the confidence to embrace change, accept what’s inevitable, and embrace the cyclical process of letting go and starting over.
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