My Favourite Nature Stories

by Ruskin Bond

Once you have lived with mountains, there is no escape. You belong to them.

Barbets love listening to their own voices, and often two or three birds answer each other from different trees, each trying to outdo the other in a shrill shouting match. Although most birds are noisy during the mating season, barbets are noisy all the year round.

Snakes do not show off.

but I quoted the sayings of Buddha, Krishna and Confucius, and persuaded him to let it live. In some former incarnation it might well have been related to us, I said. Perhaps an aunt or distant cousin. Although he wasn’t quite convinced, and nor was I, but the conversation gave the snake enough time to slip away.

And speaking of Nelson Eddy, this is the 100th anniversary of his birth. A fine baritone, unjustly neglected. When I listen

to his songs (on tape or disk), the crickets and cicadas maintain a respectful silence. I’m sure they are listening.

I still have one which I place against my ear to listen to the distant music of the Arabian Sea.

In March, the Dowers on the rhododendron trees provided splashes of red against the dark green of the hills. Sometimes there would be snow on the ground to add to the contrast.

Deodars have often inspired me to poetry. One day I wrote: Trees of God, we call them. Planted there when the world was young.

The tide was in, the sea was rough; and the wind, which was almost a gale, came pouring in from the darkness like a mad genie just released from his bottle.

Delight cannot be planned for—she makes no appointments!

It is the pigeons who have found all the coolest places. These birds have made the old city their own. New Delhi is for the crows who like to have a tree to sleep in, ever, if they take their meals from out of kitchens and verandahs But the pigeons prefer buildings and the older the buildings the better.

Hindus and Muslims have made and lost fortunes in the city, but nothing has disturbed the tranquil life of these pigeons.

It strikes the wall, and then, with a soft plop, touches water. At that instant there is a rush of air and a tremendous beating of wings, and a flock of pigeons. Thirty or forty of them fly out of the well, streak upwards, circle the building, and then falling into formation, wheel overhead, the sun gleaming white on their underwings.

Odd, how some little incident, some snatch of conversation comes back to one again and again in the most unlikely places.

Flowers would have been of no use at all but spores could carry on their lives in the prevailing dampness.

for without a view a room is hardly a living place—merely a place of transit.

When the monsoon rains arrive, the window has to be closed, otherwise cloud and mist fill the room, and that isn’t good for my books.

Over the years, the night has become my friend. On the one hand, it gives me privacy; on the other, it provides me with limitless freedom.

I must not forget the owls, those most celebrated of night birds, much maligned by those who fear the night.

Having apparently ‘psyched’ themselves into the right frame of mind, they spread their short, rounded wings and sail off for the night’s hunting.

‘Stand still for ten minutes, and they’ll build a hotel on top of you,’ said one old-timer, gesturing towards the concrete jungle that had sprung up along Mussoorie’s Mall, the traditional promenade.

As everywhere, the Scots were great pioneers in Mussoorie too, and were quick to identify Himalayan hills and meadows with their own glens and braes.

Sometimes, if I am lucky, I will see the moon coming up over the next mountain, and two distant deodars in perfect silhouette.

And even when all the people have gone, the crows will still be there.

Then the rain approached like a dark curtain.

In the brief twilight that followed, I was witness to the great yearly flight of insects into the cool, brief freedom of the night.

A frog had found its way through the bathroom and came hopping across the balcony to pause beneath the light. All he had to do was gobble, as insects fell around him.

It was one of those warm, humid afternoons when drowsiness is in the air, and the buzz of insects lulls one into slumber.

Six or seven—that’s the age at which our essential tastes, even our obsessions—begin to be stamped on us by outside impressions. They are never eradicated, even when we think we have forgotten them.

Not all our early impressions are of a pleasant nature, but they linger with us just the same.

Fortunately the most lasting impressions are the harmonious ones.