Furry To Winged Flurry The Life Of A Young Shikra

Following the activities of a family of Shikras at close range, the author reveals in interesting detail the life of a Shikra from infancy to sub-adulthood.

- Ajai Saxena

Posted to Mizoram for the first time, I arrived there in end March 2019, taking a flight from Delhi to Silchar in Assam and from there travelling by road. After staying a night at Kolasib, a small district headquarter in North Mizoram, arrived at Aizawl the next day, the capital city perched atop a north-south running ridge at an elevation of about 1,100m. The main city has grown on the slopes and on some lateral spurs coming out of this ridge and going down east and west. The gradient is very steep and almost every inch is covered by multistoried houses, many built by cutting into the slope and raised on stilts; tightly packed one over other. I was put up in the Forest Research Centre for Cane and Bamboo Research (FRCBR), located Bethelem Veng or locality, at the base of a U-shaped valley below the east-facing slope with the main city towering over it. The area is well forested as it was earlier harbouring the zoo, which was later shifted to a much bigger area on the other the side of the fast-growing city.

And it now houses the FRCBR, a Centre of Rain Forest Research Institute (RFRI), Jorhat, along with the campus of Forest Training School of Mizoram state.

The Rest House cum Farmers Hostel Complex of FRCBR is situated atop a small hillock surrounded by tall forest trees at an elevation of about 800m. During my journey through the northern parts of this mountainous state, through haze- and smoke-filled air due to freshly burnt