About Birdistan

Birdistan is basically a place to learn about birds. A content-rich platform that is dedicated to the kingdom of birds. Birders will probably find our website useful and interesting.

Our 'Birdistan' journey started on a hot Summer's day of April in the suburbs of Mumbai. Electricity was cut off due to some maintenance work. Things couldn't be any worse indoors with the sweat, heat, boredom and lethargy.

My 9-year-old Son and me didn't know what to do to while away the time. We just sat down in the bedroom by the window staring blindly outside.

We saw a parrot on the very first tree outside our window. It's a wonderful Neem tree that has been providing cooling to our surroundings for years and ensuring privacy for our neighbors and us.

I decided to talk about these parrots present on the Neem tree, they were busy eating the fruits that were growing on the tree.

I guess Spring and early summer is fruiting time for the Neem tree. Thus, it attracts these vibrant, refreshing parrots to it. Once we got interested in them then it becomes kind of addictive for us.

We started counting the number of parrots in the trees outside our window as there were not just one or two but at least six of them hanging, playing, eating, whiling away their time on the same tree.

We did not realize that we had spent most of our idle time enjoying the sight of the parrots that day. We completely forgot all about the heat, electricity outage, boredom and our other complaints.

After this awesome and free "house birding" experience with my Son, I realized quite a few things about simplicity and Parakeets.

I cannot share more on our initial birding adventures without sharing a thing or two about my Son as he is the main reason for my deep interest in Birding and the beautiful kingdom of birds that I had ignored for most of my life.

My Son was previously addicted to playing games on his tablet or computer whenever he was free. He just couldn't enjoy nature or anything that didn't involve staring at a screen.

Spending few hours without gaming, electricity and gadgets gave me hope that he might actually start liking our tiny flying companions too.

Oh, I must mention that my son also suffered from Lazy Eye (amblyopia) when he was younger, around 4 years old. Part of the therapy prescribed for him was looking outside the window at the greenery to improve his eyesight.

Though, it wasn't easy getting him to do that. If you have children then you might know that such simple things can be super challenging to do. That way, even for adults, it isn't as easy as we think these simple activities are, even when we know they can be life-changing.

So, let me now come back to the topic of interest, our feathered buddies...

The very next day in our home there were no complaints about the heat or the electricity outage, no boredom, no trouble of sweating etc.

My Son and me sat down at the same time as the earlier day and our friends on the Neem Tree were already coming and going.

We started enjoying their company a lot. While watching the parrots, we started noticing other birds in the trees and gardens below. We started paying close attention to what each of these birds were up to.

As days rolled by, we both started enjoying birding. We learned a bit more about each of these species that we spotted.

Some birds were bigger in comparison to others, some looked really amazing but we were still in the dark about them.

For me, every small bird was a Sparrow! Every black bird had to be a Crow. Then, we have the pigeons and our favorites, the parrots.

Anyway, long story short, here we are, four years later, totally interested in birds and passionate about Birding.

While we are still learning a lot about birds ourselves, we are deeply interested in sharing whatever knowledge and information we have gained along the way.

This is where this website 'Birdistan.com' comes in. Hope you enjoy your stay here. Happy Birding!

- Kirti DSilva
Team Birdistan