Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
next cove of deep woods. I kept waiting for signs of devastation, a denuded mountainside.
Yet nowhere in sight was a mountain village, terraced field, or landslide scar, all inevitable
features of the Nepalese and Indian Himalayas.
The mountainous road made us queasy and we had to stop periodically, but each time we
were rewarded by the sight of some spectacularly colored birds. First, we admired powder-
blue verditer flycatchers, then the shimmering iridescence of orange-bellied leafbirds. Next
we saw and heard the blue-throated barbet, and then the most beautiful common bird on
any continent—a male scarlet minivet, an elegant treetop inhabitant wearing blushing red
and black feathers. But all thoughts of the minivet vanished when a male Mrs. Gould's sun-
bird landed on the crown of a nearby hemlock. In the brilliant mountain light, its burgundy
mantle and back set off its bright yellow rump and belly, highlighted by a long blue tail. The
Buddhists say that attachment to beauty is one of the false perceptions humans hold. We,
however, suspended Mincha's Buddhist instruction at such moments and wallowed in our at-
tachment.
Over dinner in Trongsa, our conversation ricocheted between natural history and the sub-
ject of karma and higher rebirth. I asked Mincha if he would like to be reincarnated as the
beautiful scarlet minivet. Mincha paused for a moment and then pointed out how many in-
sects a minivet consumes in its lifetime. “Killing other creatures causes pain in the world. So
from a Buddhist perspective, we must say that the minivet is not to be envied.” Besides, he
related, there are 500 rebirths separating birds and humans, so a bird rebirth would be a big
setback from enlightenment.
Back in our room, I reached for a field guide and inadvertently knocked over the rucksack
containing our portable library. Across the floor spilled natural history topics as well as Ute's
copy of
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha
, by Tara
Brach, a clinical psychologist and respected teacher of Buddhist philosophy and meditation.
I dipped into this other type of field guide and soon came upon a passage describing how we
live our lives in a mental trance, rarely seeing what is right in front of us. As I continued to
read, my evening plan to learn to differentiate laughing thrush species switched to pondering
Brach's challenging question to the reader: Is much of one's life spent inside a cocoon of our
own making?
The next morning at dawn, we departed from Trongsa and headed south for the village of
Zhemgang. As the road descended, we left the cool broad-leaved forest for the lowland warm
broad-leaved forest, the richest habitat in Bhutan for birds and perhaps the richest remaining
in the entire Himalayas. We quickly saw that this forest was also home to several species of
primates. Troops of Assamese macaques crossed the road in front of our car as we scanned
the hillsides for langur monkeys.
The golden langur was first reported in 1907. But it was neither photographed nor filmed
until the great naturalist E. P. Gee encountered it during several expeditions he made along
