When I woke up at 4 am the first thing I heard after the alarm was the sound of hard rain. There was no way we could go for a walk in that. So I rolled over and went back to sleep, leaving The Family to figure out what she wanted to do. She joined the rest of the group and sat with them on the long verandah looking at the rain until breakfast. When I joined them for the meal, the sun had come out.
It was bright and sunny, but the air was cold enough that a walk was needed to keep us warm. It was the perfect day to follow a long path that meandered through the cliffs above the village in Mongar dzongkhag. We looked down to see the cottages surrounded by fields with ripening grain. As we walked on, these open vistas alternated with views through tall trees: the sun streaming through the spring leaves in bright green.
We stopped often to listen to birds and look at them. I was also keeping an eye out for insects and orchids. That’s when I realized that we had picked up outriders. There were four dogs with us. Every time we stopped one or two would come back to thread through the group, bumping into us. After a couple of such encounters, one of us realized that the dogs were trying to herd us. They would run ahead, and if they lost sight of us on a bend, they would come back to look at us, while two tried to chivvy us on. They followed us all along our walk, looked disappointed when we turned back, but then followed us all the way back to our hotel. They seemed to belong there.
This early in spring some trees are just getting new leaves. It was only a few years ago that I noticed that new leaves of spring start off with the same beautiful reds and yellows that autumn leaves have when they fall. They change into the lovely colour of fresh green leaves as the production of chlorophyll starts. The sunlight falling on a bunch of newly opened leaves looked so startling that I took a photo. That’s what you see here.
What did we see? Too many birds and butterflies to list here. So here are two favourites. The bird is the Verditer flycatcher (Eumias thalassinus), a rather common bird. But for The Family and me it is bound to wonderful memories of spring times in Bhutan, because that’s where we first saw it eighteen years ago with another group of strangers who turned into very good friends. The butterfly is a new acquaintance: a Yellow coster (Acraea issoria) which I identified with a little work.
It was only when I looked at the photos from the walk that I noticed this beautiful farm house had prayer flags around it. They were the goendhar flags which I thought I did not have a photo of when I wrote an earlier post about the varieties of prayer flags in Bhutan. I also realized why I’d not remembered them. The farm house was in a lovely spot overlooking the valley. We walked around to the side which faces the valley and stopped with the farm house on one side and the beautiful sunny vista on the other. That remains my memory of this house, and the flags were on the other side of the building. I’m happy I noticed this photo.
Don't hold your breath 
