Bird watching is not only a fascinating pastime, but it is also informative. It also develops one's compassion not only towards the birds, but also to all mankind as well.
One can engage in the activity from the verandah of one's own home, and watch the behaviour of the birds that come to the garden. The most common are the "ati kukula". "Pilihunduwa" "Polkichcha", "Demalichcha" "mynah" and the crow
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some of these birds have their set menu. The "Ati kukula" for instance would relentlesly hunt for snails, while the "Pilihuduwa" would patiently sit on a bough until the fish or the worms surface them selves. The "Mynah" will avoid both extremes and devour the black ants wholesale.
Then there are the birds that can walk. The "atikukula" and the "Mynah" can do so as they have learned to balance themseles on one foot in the same way as we did when we crawled on all fours. But the "Demalichcha" and the "Polkichcha" hop from place to place. Some small birds fly like lightening.
TV doesn't seem to have affected the reading habits of children either. Reading already fared badly as a habit among Asian children.
Reading never has become our children's fay ourite activity. Nawadays a great percentage of our chil-dren want to be cricketers. But school emerges as the best experience for a large proportion of the Asian children still.
