Walking into the room, I push the windows open and put my bags down on the bed in the faculty guest house of the Madurai Kamaraj University. Hardly have I pushed the third window open when I hear the loud and raucous call of an Asian Paradise Flycatcher. It's raspy call is familiar to my ears.

Throwing my bags down I peer out the window in shock. There in full view, was a male Asian Paradise Flycatcher and in my favourite brick colour with curling and elongated tail feathers. He tipped his head and spread his crest feathers, cockily squawked looking around for predators and then flew off into the undergrowth.

What a way to start my three day trip to Madurai where I had come as the key note speaker for a 3 day National Media training conference on Climate Change. While walking into the campus early in the morning, through the two km stretch to the faculty guest house I saw groups of squabbling Jungle Babblers or Seven Sisters. We don't see them any more in Bangalore, where I come from. There was also a group of sedate peacocks who solemnly walked across the road their long tails bobbing behind and disappeared into the undergrowth. Mynas called cheekily overhead and heaps of Red vented Bulbuls swished around the trees, their liquidy calls identifying them before I saw them. Rose ringed parakeets were busy stuffing themselves in the Ficus trees -- there is a lot of regular bird life in Madurai.

Next morning I was woken around 5:30 am when the rosy fingers of dawn were lighting up the tops of the trees with a tap, tap tapping. My city mind thought with irritation, does a carpenter have to start that early? Then I realised I was in Madurai and there was no carpenter working there, that sound was of a wood pecker! I flew out of bed and gently pushed open one window. There on the dead Gulmohur tree was a Flame Back Woodpecker tap, tap, tapping on the bark, getting it's breakfast of insects early in the morning and I smiled at the sight. No money could buy me the sight I was enjoying
.
A half hour later once the Wood pecker was done, a beautiful pair of Hoopoe's bounced up and down the trunk and branches of the tree gobbling up insects. The last time I had seen a Hoopoe was in Delhi as a young girl in school.

Urbanization is pushing these beautiful feathered friends of ours to the brink and sadly those of us who love nature can only find the joy of bird watching in the little untouched areas of our country.