Bird on blue

The monsoon appears to have gone on hiatus, leaving a spurt of days so blue it hurts to hide at home in the service of dark duties. Out on the bund, the raptors wheel over the mangroves, chasing, tumbling, swooping and soaring in turn as they tussle for territories in an airspace of hooked bills and unsheathed talons. Kites, sea eagles, buzzards, harriers and hawks drift on the December wind, stooping low for just a while in a sky of aquamarine clarity before a return to higher zones for happier hunting or heading south to winter haunts. Many are still fresh from their first year, with mottled colours and the brash confidence that goes with every new generation that has not yet learnt to fall and faced neither fear nor failure.