Learning, or more appropriately, perhaps, “awareness” is the better word, is usually a gradual, inch by inch process, building and building to finally get there as a shape you can put your mind around. Usually, that’s how it works, but sometimes it comes like a shooting star from outer space or, on occasion, as something more benign. Yesterday, there was a striking example of the latter, for me, involving a Nam Doc Mai mango tree growing in the yard where Annette and I live in Oleander Gardens. It’s not a huge property, but significant enough to contain several happy fruit trees – ackee, sapodilla, mango, bread fruit, golden apple – which inevitably means a collection of the birds we are blessed to have in Guyana. The Nam Doc mango, more or less at the front of the yard, has become home to a Kiskdaee mother who built a nest, completely unknown to us, in the lower branches of the tree with a random collection of narrow twigs and other plant material. Amazingly, the nest was completely invisible to us. We only got wind of it, when this bright yellow bird, came soaring out of the tree and dive bombed our Pit Bull Peppa who inadvertently came too close to it in her roaming. Mother Kis gave me one of her flash by warnings, which is what actually led to my discovering her nest, and then parked in the upper branches of another tree clearly waiting in case another warning was needed. Others from the household got similar warnings out in the yard from Mother Kis who was on guard duty somewhere completely invisible to us.
