Just back from US.  2nd night sleeping.  Slept from 1030 to 630.    How great is that.  Take that jet lag.  But skipped working out since I am afraid that I am getting a cold.   Instead I sat on our balcony looking over the beautifully landscaped courtyard.   Sunny.  Mild.  Watching  the bird kingdom wake up.  All kinds of variety of birds.  Medium sized green ones. Tiny birds. The size of hummingbirds. Flitting in pairs across the courtyard from tree to tree just above me.  Dark colored.  Bluish tint.  Then in the trees of our neighbors, 2 large birds with very long tails and extraordinary beaks.  Camouflaged by their brown color.  They are similar in size to a large black crow but their beaks and tails have to be 12-18 inches in length.   Then later, there is another large bird feeding on some kind of berry or seedlings in another tree in our neighbor’s yard.  Also similar in size to a large crow but with a brown trim body speckled with white spots.  This is what I am missing when I go to yoga or head downstairs to the workout facility to run on the treadmill.

Now a couple hours later, there is a loud cacophony of honking horns rising up from the streets below.  A constant din.  Then I hear pigeons that like to roost where we have a closet of water pipes on our back balcony.  There were four of them inside the metal grills before I chased them away.  The Muslims consider them holy birds of a sort.  When Muhammad was fleeing some warlords with whom he had been mixing it up, he ducked into a cave full of pigeons.  His enemies passed on and could not find him.  So the Muslims love to feed the pigeons and spread seeds out on the floor of their open mosques.  Kathleen thinks that we should leave them alone.  I guess that they will not hurt anything.  Our Muslim Man Friday likely will not want to mess with them.