One morning in April 2020, early in the lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, I leaned over my terrace parapet of my home in Bengaluru, scanning the spreading branches of a Yekke (aak; aakdo; Calotropis gigantea) plant to spot a pale-billed flowerpecker whose trills I could distinctly hear. Eye to the viewfinder, I looked for the bird, the smallest in India at just over 3 inches. I found something else entirely. A dark form, an obsidian body with sky-blue eyes, was perched on a flower, its head bent into the petals. Hastily focusing on it, I shot off a few frames…
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