- BEAUTIFUL Puputan Margarana Square offers shady trees becoming native home to various birds.
- Visitors can take advantage of their presence through bird watching Bali to observe their vivacity on tree branches
Bird or bird observation perhaps one of the most attractive activities for bird lovers. If you happen to spend holidays in Bali, you can still have the opportunity to observe the life of a number of birds in smaller habitat like a square as having many plants or trees.
Puputan Margarana Square at Renon, Denpasar, for instance, can become a simple habitat for some wonderful birds. Each corner is planted with banyan tree. The other trees are palms, champak, neem, frangipani, jackfruit, java plum, pandanus, breadfruit and some others. So, songbirds come and take advantage of the trees as their playground.
As public place, the Puputan Margarana Square, located in front of the governor’s office, becomes a center for some leisure activities of city dwellers. Some people may have a fun walk with family or friends, while some others have yoga exercise, play football or visit the Bajra Sandhi Monument while on working hours. After doing such activities, people may also look for instant food offered by hawkers at parking lot in the east of the square. Then, after or without doing such activities, you can resume to observing birds living or playing around the square even though the square is not especially intended for bird watching object in Bali.
Unfortunately, the birds living in the area are adequately limited. There are spotted dove, flycatcher and various cereal-eater birds or manias as well as squirrels. Nevertheless, it suffices for you to deepen observation to birds.
Hobby of bird watching allows people to identify a number of bird species, see their attractive behavior, and explore new places with unknown habitats. Additionally, this activity takes people to open space, improve health and increase appreciation to the beauty of nature. Of course, this also makes people more sensitive, especially increasing the level of awareness and expanding one’s world view.
Likewise, this activity also provides new perspective on why some people start observing birds as their ordinary hobby. Puputan Margarana Square is a public place easily accessed by city dwellers and by guests from Sanur area, in the east of Denpasar City.
Actually binoculars are important for bird watching. However, if you do not have yet, simply use your DSLR camera with zoom lense or just take advantage of your own mobile phone.
For the convenience of birds or easiness to watch birds, do not put on flashy or sparkling white clothes. Othewise, when seeing you the birds may be rushing away. As beginners, it’s enough to just bring a camera and capture them by looking for some of the best poses. Do not forget to make the condition as natural as possible. Thus, the birds will also feel undisturbed.
When the sun is brighter or by midday, the dew on the grasses will disappear. Flycatchers are delighted to move from one tree to another. Or even they gather at one tree branch and play together. If the grasses around the Bajra Sandhi Monument happen to be in bloom, they may draw the arrival of cereal-eater birds such as scaly-breasted munia, white-headed munia, Javan Munia and Moluccan Munia to eat grass seeds.
Try to walk behind the bird and never disturb their existence. You just need to take convenient shelter and try to create an atmosphere as natural as possible so that birds will come closer and move conveniently. After that, you can freely capture every movement of the birds.
Various flycatchers usually twit while jumping from one branch to another. They look so beautiful and sound melodious. When perching on strategic branch, they look so attempting and driving the attention of photographers. Seemingly, they are inviting birders to come closer.
Meanwhile, if there are no birds, you can observe some local tropical plants of Indonesia around the monument. They bear fruits in different season. At least, you can get closer look at some plants that are commonly taken advantage by Balinese people in their life.
