Here's another round of better photos of my new frens from my backyard. You can see the pied myna or the asian pied starling with their somewhat unfriendly cousin the myna. They were all eating breakfast together in the sizeable garden but the myna seemed reluctant to share with their more colourful cousins.

Another set is the babblers. Notice the head of white hair on one of them. That's the yellow-billed babbler, not an aged relative of the brown-all-over babbler.

I spotted some spotted doves getting ready for an office day. The last set of cousins who kinda always hang out together are the bulbuls - red vented and red whiskered. You should see them play...they go round and round in circles around a saptaparni or ficus tree chasing each other and twittering gleefully. Their energy is infectious. They are also extremely camera friendly model posers.

You know guys, I was comparing notes of backyard birds (or "neigh-birds" as one birder fren Manon likes to call them), with frens in Karnataka and theres such a diversity of bird populations there to watch. From my friend's balcony in Kotagiri she could spot red avadavats, green bee eaters, hoopoes, blue kingfishers, so many sparrows, roller birds, little bushchats, Robins and tits, tickels flowerpeckers, flycatchers, slaty headed parakeets, laughing thrush, even a sloth bear and the Malabar squirrel. Needless to say I am contemplating a move to the Western Ghats! The grass is defo greener on that side.