The warblers had begun to arrive! After the birdwatcher’s yearly dry spell through summer, and with the monsoon migrants flying away, we heard a metallic che…che, followed by a dry rattle, in the Aravalli Biodiversity Park in Gurugram. The bird is fairly adaptive, adjusting to varied habitats like open country, thorny shrubs and acacias of arid scrubland, and even inhabits …
It was August 22, 2020, and with the pandemic travel guidelines slightly lifted, I made a quick dash to Gurugram to catch up with a former intern who was leaving for Oxford University. I hadn’t expected to hear the shrill, loud disyllabic ‘chee-wee’ cry of the Greenish Warbler, in a stray wild patch outside her high-rise apartment. The timid behaviour …