Mangoes and Parakeets Peck

Summer is a season of mangoes! At the end of winter the mango trees in India starts to bloom following new shoot of leaves and in less than a month the mango trees turns fruit-bearing. Mangoes are considered delicious and prime among the sweetest fruits and there’s a word in Tamil called Mukkani (three fruits) where Maa (Mango) is first and Palaa (Jackfruit) and Vaazhai (Banana) make successive landing. In Tamil Nadu, Salem is very popular for tasty mangoes and this district and its surroundings produce tons of tasty mangoes yearly and Periyakulam in Theni district is also called Mango City due to its fair amount of mangoes produced.

Here's someone trying to nip from above

Mangoes do great business in this season of summer, but these days artificially ripen of mangoes are into sale and people has to be cautious while purchasing fruits. In cities it’s becoming rare to see mango trees and no one seems interested to stone out mangoes from the trees like what we used to do in childhood and everyone knows in Tamil Nadu that a stolen mango has high deliciousness than what bought for money. Nature is so gifted with mango trees with ever delicious pulp within a soft skin. A fruit-bearing tree is always an attraction for birds and squirrels, the very first species to taste the essence of the season and I’m glad to live opposite a mango tree, grown within the compound of a neighbour to get me chance to see and hear birds feast on hanging mangoes. 

I see/hear Mynas, Green Parakeets and Asian Koels screeching in the mornings and evenings hiding from the thick foliage of mango tree and sometime I see green parakeet acrobat in peck eating the fresh pulp. Parakeet is a regular sighting in the neighbourhood but mostly they quick screech across the sky and only in summer they stay sometime hunting on the hanging mangoes. Glad I moved to our house to see it happening closer, after moving out of our apartment house where I would see many birds forage on open vegetation. Last week I decided to capture the show that I missed to capture sometime due to laziness or unreachable with camera to focus on the Parakeet. Being a green parakeet it often hid in the greenery of the tree makes it difficult to focus or finding its presence.

Parakeet neatly bit off the pulp, leaving away the seed.