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Brown-eared Bulbul
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| It could be fun in general to ramble in parks
with looking flowers beginning to open on a great fine holiday in early
spring. At this season every year I think about going to parks to photograph
birds coming to blossoms as other photographers do so. But I always hesitate
to do. When I go outdoors, my nose becomes too itchy, my eyes too watery
and the brain becomes too dull to take photos, which is the reason. In March, just beginning of the spring, cedars and cypresses scatter the pollen with all the pleasure in their lives. The hard season for pollen-allergy outdoor persons has come. Though the symptoms have been improved in these years with me, maybe because of long poor life, I still need tissues all the time anywhere. The figure with a camera on one hand and with tissue on the other looks pitiable from anyone. The representative bird that visits blossoms in this season is the Brown-eared Bulbul. Though many people do not like its raucous voice "hy-yoh hy-yoh" or the dim gray look, I think it is interesting all its own. Not a few people would witness brown-eared bulbuls thrusting the head into blossoms of camellia or cherry to suck nectar. It is funny that the face yellowed with pollen looks somehow stupid. Brown-eared bulbuls love blossom in itself as well as nectar. They gobble blossoms and flowers. Particularly they have a weakness for yellow flowers, so ROBAI, yellow blossoms opening in the earliest spring in Japanese gardens; or Japanese allspice, is just right target for them. @ Taking no thought for people loving flowers, they tear off and gulp blossom after blossom. If persons taking an utmost care of garden trees for the blossoms look such scene, they could scream. I had once witnessed a brown-eared bulbul on the ground tearing off and eating even flowers like dandelion. Yellow flowers are, anyway, delicious for them. Brown-eared bulbuls, flower lovers, must have never involved in pollen allergy. The sniveling Sunday photographer enviously looks them with blowing the nose, as usual. |
| (March 20, 2000) |