Paddyfield Pipit

 When the Paddyfield Pipits crossed path with a Skink, it was to each its own - a classic example of minding one's own business.

The younger one looked like it was not even aware of the presence of the skink. 

And for the other, it was simply business as usual.

Oblivion is bliss.

What Was

 It started with a beautiful story, extraordinary and heart-warming.

The sights and sounds are still as vivid today as then.

The story will most definitely never die, having drawn innumerable to its site, and now even as the chosen had fallen.

So, will this spell the end of the presence of the Black-thighed Falconets?

I surely hope not, for even this morning, this pair still hover next to their lost home.

 A most sorry sight to behold.

What it was before.

The storm was mighty, taking down right at what were the weakest links - at the nest cavities that had inevitably hollowed out the branch.

However, an opportunity to glimpse what it looked like inside the Falconet's home, what still remained standing.

A home literally broken into two, a cavity pretty big that could even accommodate six falconets at a time.

And this was the erstwhile home of the Banded Woodpeckers, also taken apart, to display a remarkably smooth interior, the superb skill of woodpeckers.

Blue-eared Kingfisher

 About week later.

As long as the juvenile still hung around, and the parents too, it's only natural that the parent happily offered a meal or two when both met.

Banded Woodpecker

It looked like a family of adult and sub-adult Banded Woodpeckers, a successful breeding from elsewhere - noisy, ceaselessly moving about, never far from one another but when one left, the rest did too.

And they started their play from almost at the tree base that I almost had to squat to get at them.

And it made a recent memory all the more poignant, of what could have been.

Taking their time to climb after the one that had gone way up.

It was challenging to pinpoint the adult from the junior.

Finally a better take of which is adult and which sub-adult.

Another young one that suddenly appeared to flee immediately at the call of another.

And  for curiosity sake, I couldn't help but walked over to check on the old Banded Woodpecker's cavity nest, just in time to see this young Black-thighed Falconet at the entrance.

And surprise, surprise, the parents were around too, an uncommon family presence around this time of the day, to which Juvy subsequently joined.