Shri Nathji’s favorite birds

Shri Nathji’s favorite birds were Neelkanth Bird, Peacock, Cuckoo and sparrows.  Shri Nathji loved the peacock-mor and the neelkanth bird with a blue colour, which he said brought good luck. His favourite birds were little sparrows. “Look how these birds go in pairs and intelligently build their nests,” he would frequently say to Priya Nath, reminding him of marriage. For years Shri Nathji had listened to cuckoobirds that sat on a pole outside the house in turns.

“Cuckoo-koo!” the bird would say,”Cuckookoo!”

And Shri Nathji interpreted this as the language of the bird hailing its Creator, Shri

Nathji, with the words:

“Jai-Jai-Jai! – Jai-Jai-Jai!”

Shri Nathji recollected that when He was very young, sparrows would come and cling to his breast. Shri Nathji was always worried whenever a sparrow entered his bedroom, lest the ceiling fan hit it. Shri Nathji loved all animals and birds, and would often say: “Birds fly together in groups, and herds of animals, move together. Unfortunately it is only man who has not learnt to live with his fellowman.” After Shri Nathji had left the world on the 6th of September 1992, all the sparrows and birds which lived in the tree in the lawn of the house left the tree, and all the birds which had made their nests in niches of the wall and the ventilators of the house, flew away, never to return. Perhaps they had been living close to Shri Nathji so that they could gain salvation by glancing at Him.

Neelkanth is the Indian Roller (Coracias benghalensis), also called the Blue Jay. They are found mainly in the Indian Subcontinent, and are best known for the aerobatic displays of the male during the breeding season. They are very commonly seen perched along roadside trees and wires and are commonly seen in open grassland and scrub forest habitats. They descend to the ground to capture their prey which may include insects. It is not migratory, but undertakes some seasonal movements.

The Indian Roller is a stocky bird about 26–27 cm long. The breast is brownish. The crown and vent are blue. The primaries are deep purplish blue with a band of pale blue. The tail is sky blue with a terminal band of Prussian blue and the central feathers are dull green. The neck and throat are purplish lilac with white shaft streaks. The bare patch around the eye is ochre in colour. The three forward toes are united at the base. Rollers have a long and compressed bill with a curved upper edge and a hooked tip. The nostril is long and exposed and there are long rictal bristles at the base of the bill.

Being very common in the populated plains of India, it is associated with legends. A local name is neelkanth (meaning "blue throat"), a name associated with the deity Shiva (who drank poison resulting in the blue throat). During former times, a captive roller would be released by the local ruler during festivals such as Dussera and Durga Puja. Adding its chopped feathers to grass and feeding them to cows was believed to increase their milk yield. The Indian Roller has been chosen as the state bird by the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka and Orissa.

The Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is a large and brightly coloured bird of the pheasant family native to South Asia, but introduced and semi-feral in many other parts of the world. The peacock (male) is predominantly blue with a fan-like crest of spatula-tipped wire-like feathers and is best known for the long train made up of elongated upper-tail covert feathers which bear colourful eyespots. These stiff and elongated feathers are raised into a fan and quivered in a display during courtship. The female lacks the train, has a greenish lower neck and has a duller brown plumage. They are found mainly on the ground in open forest or cultivation where they forage for berries, grains but will also prey on snakes, lizards, and small rodents. Their loud calls make them easy to detect, and in forest areas, often indicate the presence of a predator such as a tiger. They forage on the ground, moving in small groups and will usually try to escape on foot through undergrowth and avoid flying. They will fly up into tall trees to roost, however. It is a bird that is celebrated in Indian and Greek mythology and is the national bird of India.

The male, known as a peacock, is a large bird with a length from bill to tail of 100 to 115 cm (40 to 46 inches) and to the end of a fully grown train as much as 195 to 225 cm  and weigh 4–6 kg. The females, or peahens, are smaller at around 95 cm  in length and weigh 2.75–4 kg .The male is metallic blue on the crown, the feathers of the head being short and curled. The fan-shaped crest on the head is made of feathers with bare black shafts and tipped with blush-green webbing. A white stripe above the eye and a crescent shaped white patch below the eye are formed by bare white skin. The sides of the head have iridescent greenish blue feathers. The back has scaly bronze-green feathers with black and copper markings. The scapular and the wings are buff and barred in black, the primaries are chestnut and the secondaries are black. The tail is dark brown and the "train" is made up by elongated upper tail coverts (more than 200 feathers, the actual tail has only 20 feathers) and nearly all of these feathers end with an elaborate eye-spot. A few of the outer feathers lack the spot and end in a crescent shaped black tip. The underside is dark glossy green.

 The adult peahen has a rufous-brown head with a crest as in the male but the tips chestnut edged with green. The upper body is brownish with paler mottling. The primaries, secondaries and tail are dark brown. The lower neck is metallic green and the breast feathers are dark brown glossed with green. The rest of the underparts are whitish. Downy young are pale buff with a dark brown mark on the nape connecting with the eyes

The cuckoos are generally medium sized slender birds. Popularly called the Koel in India. The majority are arboreal, with a sizeable minority that are terrestrial. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, with the majority of species being tropical. Some species are migratory. The cuckoos feed on insects, insect larvae and a variety of other animals, as well as fruit.  is a brood parasite that lays its eggs in the nests of crows and other hosts, who raise its young. The name koel is echoic in origin with several language variants and the bird is a widely used symbol in Indian poetry.

The Asian Koel is a large, long-tailed, cuckoo measuring 39–46 cm and weighing 190–327 g. The male of the nominate race is glossy bluish-black, with a pale greenish grey bill, the iris is crimson, and it has grey legs and feet. The female of the nominate race is brownish on the crown and has rufous streaks on the head. The back, rump and wing coverts are dark brown with white and buff spots. The underparts are whitish, but is heavily striped. The other subspecies differ in colouration and size. The upper plumage of young birds is more like that of the male and they have a black beak. They are very vocal during the breeding season (March to August in South Asia), with a range of different calls. The familiar song of the male is a repeated koo-Ooo. The female makes a shrill kik-kik-kik... call. Calls vary across populations.

The word "Koel" is derived from the Hindi word which is onomatopoeic in origin. The Sanskrit root is "Kokila" and the words in various Indian languages are similar. It is traditionally held in high regard for its song and held in reverence with the Manusmriti, an ancient decree protecting them from harm. The Vedas, Sanskrit literature dated to about 2000 BC referred to it as Anya-Vapa which meant "that was raised by others". This has been interpreted as the earliest knowledge of brood parasitism.  Being familiar birds with loud calls, references to them are common in folklore, myth and poetry. It has been chosen as the state bird by the southern Indian state of Pondicherry. These birds were once very popular in India as cagebirds. Feeding even on boiled rice, these hardy birds lived in captivity for as long as 14 years.

The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds. Many species nest on buildings, and the House and Eurasian Tree Sparrows in particular inhabit cities in large numbers, so sparrows may be the most familiar of all wild birds. They are primarily seed-eaters, though they also consume small insects. Some species scavenge for food around cities and, like gulls or Rock Doves, will happily eat virtually anything in small quantities.

Generally, sparrows are small, plump, brown-grey birds with short tails and stubby, powerful beaks. Sparrows are generally social birds, with many species breeding in loose colonies and most species occurring in flocks during the non-breeding season.

Most sparrows form large roosting aggregations in the non-breeding seasons that contain only a single species.  Sparrows can be beneficial to humans as well, especially by eating insect pests.