One of the things about living in India (and many other parts of the world!) is there can be a casual impromptu approach to popping over to someone’s home.
The other night was such an evening where my partner bumped into a friend when he was out, so the friend came home to savour a couple single malts, nibbles, music and conversation for a few hours. It was a relaxing, thoroughly enjoyable and completely unplanned evening.
However after he left, we had an unexpected guest… who stayed for the night.
Now that doesn’t normally happen in such an impromptu way and in this case, what was most unusual is our guest was not of the homo sapien variety. Nope! We had what we think was a young pied cuckoo also known as a “Monsoon” or “Courting Cuckoo” as they make their appearance around monsoon and have a distinctive mating call.
Try to spot our guest on a favourite perch!
The little fellow initially seemed a bit distressed at having flown into our home. My partner gently caught him and then released him outside… only to have him come right back!
Eventually we decided to let it be. And our guest decided to stay. Flitting around, settled in, and certainly seemed to enjoy perching on top of our bookshelf and art.
We went to sleep…
In the morning, the little one was still there. Greeting me with a cheerful chirp. Flitted around a bit and seemed quite curious about my morning routine.
However it turns out our guest is camera-shy. At the point I grabbed my camera, I managed to get only one shot before it blithely went to our balcony, for only a moment perched on the grill rungs, then flew off!
With nary a thank you for spending the night. I tell you, the manners of house guests these days!
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Everyday Asia 
Loved this, that’s India for you! I loved travelling in the country and as my family are from Punjab it’s always great to go back…..except when I do the whole village turns out to see me 🙂
A whole village? The scary thing about India is ‘towns’ have a couple million people so… just how many folks turned out to see you in your last visit to the Punjab???
It must have been a good 50, I was taking my then wife to see the family, she being white had no idea what to expect when we turned up! The whole village turned out to see the white lady, and kept on muttering ‘doesn’t she look like Princess Diana?’. Bless them.
Was great material for my book 🙂
Haha! Married to a princess, eh? Lucky man!
Luck is such a relative word…can be good as well as bad!
I love reading your blog, reminds me of my travelling days 🙂
Ah.. indeed.
And thanks for taking the time read… haven’t been terribly inspired in my blogs lately as have been in ‘head down get work done!’ mode… hope to surface soon!
Well I’m glad you do as they’re always worth a read. We seem to have similar careers which involve travelling, I love it 🙂
I was so proud today of my blogpost about birdwatching in my Indian garden, and then you go and outdo me with birdwatching in your living room.
Haha! I’d love to swap a garden for balconies so we’re square. 🙂
The best I can come up with are bats. They do get in every now and again when they get temporarily trapped on the patio. Then all I have to do is open my bedroom window and it’s “welcome to the bat cave!”
Byt you try taking a pic of those… little buggers are so fast!
Bat cave, hm? And just what is your secret super-power??
We had a lot of bats at a music camp we would go to as kids called St Stevens (I think!)…. a couple times the bats flew into the string music class. Imagine the chaos as kids scattered everywhere and the hapless bat was trying desperately to exit stage left, right, anywhere!!
I like bats 🙂
Its’ a shame that she didn’t stay for a photo.
I just managed to snag that one pic perched on the painting… and then off the little one went! Talk about being shy of cameras…
Nobody EVER pops in unannounced in LV – animal or human! 🙂
Haha! It isn’t exactly normal in the modern urban Canada lifestyle either…. but here in Mumbai, it sometimes just happens. With the totally impromptu times sometimes the best!
Impromptu nights always are!
You handled it with better humor than me – not a fan or birds or bats in the house!
Bats in the house? Not so keen. A bird or two? Can handle that. A mouse in the house? Squeek!!
I’m surprised that you slept, at least very well. I would have been worried about the poor thing all night.
All the windows were wide open with no readily apparent hazards, so we figured it would leave when it wanted to… and it did! 🙂