Wise Gems

In my last article, I mentioned about weaver birds. As a child I used to be amazed about their nests. These tiny birds use the simplest of materials to build one of the best living places. The male is in charge of building the nest. There is a lot of effort put in to collect the right strands. And then they are weaved together to form the structure. Different kinds of complicated knots are used while building the structure.  The small sparrow like creatures use primarily their sharp beaks to cut the twins into the right sizes and then to weave it into this inverted pot like structure.  Trust me, these structures are amazingly strong. I have personally seen these withstand the strongest of winds... without any damage. The female inspects the nest before pairing with the male. Once the female is pleased with it, the male completes the long snout like entrance, sometimes with help from his new partner.  To understand how complicated this can be for the small bird, try to weave a ba

The words of the title are taken from the beautiful movie 'Sound of Music'. This is a classic movie and I grew up hearing the songs of this movie.  These are some of the favorite things I enjoyed as a child.  Near my house where I grew up, there was a lawn on a slope. I used to love rolling down this lawn, smelling the grass all the way down. Then run to the top only to roll down again. And repeat it several times. It was fun with a side effect. My entire body used to itch and the first thing necessary after reaching home was a good bath.  On the edges of the same lawn were palm trees with weaver bird nests. It used to be a wonderful thing for us how these birds used to build nests shaped like upside down jugs.  There was a group of trees that had bright red seeds. I remember spending hours collecting these in jam bottles.  Those were times when there was absolutely no traffic. The township was a maze of well tarred roads crisscrossing on a hilly terrain. Cycling to

The Squirrels I am blessed to be currently staying in a home where my window gives me a view of a tree top. It is wonderful to see the green leaves spread out and give shade to the passers by in the lane four floors below. This tree is so close that if I reach out I may be able to touch the leaves. Sometimes there are flowers on the tree which are fondly eaten by squirrels. Once, I opened my window and was watching the scenic beauty outside. I noticed the flower of the tree real close. And to my surprise a squirrel approached the flower. Normally, squirrels do not approach if they see a human nearby. But this one was unaware of my presence and started to nibble on the flower. I stayed still as I did not want to lose the opportunity of watching this bundle of fur so close to me. It stayed there munching the flower. Then suddenly, it noticed me. To my surprise, it did not scamper away. It stay put, munching and stared me in the eye. For a few seconds we saw each other. When it finis