Sleep deprived in the Urban Forest

No – not urban jungle. I mean the urban forest.

I live near the center of Panjim city with a little hill behind my block and a landscaped garden with trees in front.  The main color seen outside any window is green.  If I were to count the old trees visible from my windows the number would be greater than 30.  Because of the hill, the horizon is less than a quarter km away making the green in this expanse very dense.  A forest.

The number of concrete structures is less than half a dozen. And the city centre is less than a kilometer away. And so this is an urban forest.

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Everyone speaks of the benefits of living within nature.  The fresh air, the calming effect of greenery, etc etc. And I believed all that. Until recently.

Sometime in the past year, a bird has taken up a nest residence in to one of these trees.

There have always been birds but this one is worth writing about.

This bird that wakes up precisely at 3.30 am and begins its sweet shrill singing.  At aroung 5.45 am the pre-dawn twilight it stops. For two hours the singing is constant and repetitve.

A bit like my kids practicing their piano skills in their childhood.

And if I  evaluate it objectively, it is sweet.

But between 3.30am -5.30am it is hard to be objective……

Maybe she has migrated and is jet-lagged.

Maybe the worms she likes wake up earlier than others……

The crows have migrated away …. probably for good reason.

The property prices – I wonder if they have gone down in this area.

The health score?  Don’t know whether the oxygen from the greenery has helped the human lot, but I for one, am a sleep deprived zombie groucho.

Living within nature. In an urban forest.

(On a serious note – this bird has the most unusual and long tweet and it is quite sweet – if only we could delay her music enough for me to record it and put it up for bird enthusiasts who might enjoy it!)

jm

April 2013