India, June 29 -- British ornithologists of the Raj found Indian birds enigmatic. To them, the Indian robin combined boldness and suspicion in the same ounce of feathered frailty. Further, unlike the British robin, the Indian namesake preferred to sport its red not on its chest but tactically tucked under a longish, active tail. The Indian fellow is not quite so modest and does not hesitate to cock his tail well forward over the back to display the chestnut hues adorning the vent, especially when his fair lady may be tempted to take a peek or a rival male threatens sovereignty! To this, I may add that the Indian robin is one whose temperament succumbs to bouts of puzzlement and curiosity, and will dare his life and limb to put his convulsed mind to rest. I was on a jungle quest in the foothills behind Mirzapur dam on Tuesday. Since I tend to take not the path less travelled but one not travelled at all, it was a toiling trek in saunal humidity and ripping thicket. As I rested on a rock, alarm calls emitted: "cheeeh....cheeeh" at suspenseful intervals. I was in a jungle where no humans set foot, and was wearing a black safari hat. My eccentric, mad hatter presence had alarmed, and at the same time, intrigued a male robin. It is currently the vulnerable nesting season, and the pair rears up to three broods. Robins can use snake slough to line nests, and one was fashioned from hair curls (hopefully not from a murdered, jungle-dumped lady)! Having expended his calls, the robin abandoned his covert perch. He flew to alight on a bush opposite me, just out of arm's length. To the robin, I must have illusioned a "giant alien" emergent from a cosmic black hole. He gave me an "up & down" look in piqued headmaster style. He turned his neck this way and that way to get his eyes to ascertain my antecedents from all angles and mysteries. I sat in all innocence through the visual interrogation. Soon enough, the robin accepted my inoffensive demeanour as a gentleman's (unsaid) word of honour: "I come & go in peace". He flew off to his domestic chores, and his alarms were not heard thence. I recalled John Muir: "The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."...