David Jardine
Southeast Asia-based writer.

A FLASH of green and light-red plumage a few feet up above my head in the branches of a tree overhanging the pavement from a private garden on Jalan Cemara in Jakarta’s Menteng district. The bird has been raiding the tree for fruit and I guess that it is a parakeet of some sort, probably an escapee from a private house or perhaps an aviary.

It flutters away to another tree across the road and I watc