Wildlife Diary
My Adventures-I
Dear diary,
My actual journey in the wild begins in the University level. Being a Pakistani, I am not motivated or inspired in my childhood. It is a secret passion I found in me, myself. Since school, one’s mind is set to be a doctor, or engineer. Some with a strong family background might want to be an architecture or maybe pilot, or some player. While those with financial issues won’t do much than supporting their father’s wheel-barrow. If you find yourself thinking about some real great goal or dream like me, you are fine by the end of college. The moment you step in the University, you have burdens of responsibilities. Life is being faced by family finance, jobs, career, abroad expectations and no opportunities, internships, experience, toxic environments and many more perks.
I am no an exception, but there’s a difference between me and other student — Self-Motivation and Inspiration. Even if I take any motivational class, I find myself as I’ve been self-taught all those techniques. That’s really a save of time. At school, because of my good grades and the habit of asking questions and replying complicated questions, I was being called as Scientist. Before that I also has the simple dream, to be a doctor like others. Because I always find myself different everywhere, from face to fact, from nature to behavior, I feel as if I am made differently. This thought made me think a greater dream, to make my destination unlike others. That’s where my journey as an innovator begins and here I am still striving for that dream.
With age, I became lonelier and all by myself in my way of achieving goals. I found out my interest and aptitude towards Biological Sciences. In college, I also gave MCAT for MBBS and faced my cursed luck. Back to my original goal, in the second year of my university, I finally got a chance to showcase my passion and polish my skills. We were given an assignment to make a little research over the vertebral fauna of University of Karachi. Here we were given the task, there I was making plans about whom should I add in my group. I wanted such people who liked adventures and could chase dangers, those who are ready to explore any time with no restrictions.
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So at first with my own friends, I started with the department. My session was evening, but for research, I went to the university in the morning as I was jobless at that time. I found out that the sky we see regularly holds hundreds of secrets in the form of beautiful colors. I’m not talking about the nebula and stars, but those which shine in the daylight and those which break the ice at night.
To identify those birds, I needed to do some research. I had no good camera or binoculars, just relying on phone camera with burst pixels and it made hard for me to identify even using the google lens. It’s not reliable all the time. So on weekends, you could see me at my home with my laptop having all colorful seasonal birds of Asia and a copy making notes on fauna of Pakistan. To my surprise, I found very little research in the field in Pakistan and that was also unreliable. I was tired off by the regular crows and those yellow beaked birds — Some people used to call them Koel and some Cuckoo while write them as Quail in English. The first thing I did was searched up this mess and sorted out those yellow-beaked blackish-brown birds as Common Mynah, the solitary black bird with red eyes and shy nature as Cuckoo or Asian Koel, while Quail (we couldn’t find but is found in KU according to those papers) as another chicken like but small bird, Bater in Urdu. Making up a list of already known animals, I found out another thing — A big mistake that every 2nd Pakistani or you can say every other Pakistani except for a BS Zoologist makes — is calling the Black Kite, an eagle. There are no eagles in Pakistan, at least not in any professor’s experience.
Teachers in the university are the witnesses of my presence in early morning as my recent experience told me that there are less species at the time of noon. The best time was the daybreak, both in the morning and in the evening. One day in the evening, I spotted a black and white stripped bird from some distance on the roof of Marine Sciences department and at first sight, I knew it was not a common one. Moving closer to it slowly, to my astonishment, I saw the crown on its head with a long narrow funnel -like beak and I shouted out to my friend, “it’s a Hud-hud!” I identified it as the Hoopoe. I kept it as a secret between my best friend as I was alone in my ventures.
Upupa epops, also known as Eurasian Hoopoe, belongs to the order Bucerotiformes and family Upupidae. Bucerotiformes get their name by cow-horned shaped casques over the top of their bills (not all species in this order has this). The population of Hoopes is declining but it is of least concern. Seeing how these Hoopoes go around departments, searching for food and distinct calling from some female in its burrow, feels much peaceful in this busy town.
Recently (in February), a pair of Hoopoe was seen feeding on the ground. The male was leading and protecting the female. April marks the initiation of their breeding season. Male displays its striking body to attract female, uses soft sounds and aerial chasing during courtship. They sound like Ho-ho-ho-ho, as their name and the intensity of their calls increases when a female is nearby. The male provides female with food and protection. Encountering a potential rival, the male shows its dominance by fanning and raising its crest and by making aggressive calls to mark its territory. It may even engage in bill-dueling or aerial fights to protect its female and eggs. This discovery fired up my all curious cells of brain and I didn’t realize how my hearing and sounds recognizing ability developed afterwards.
