What do flamingoes sound like?

Tall pink Flamingoes in a flock/were engrossed in their chatter/with their twisty coat-hanger necks/honking all the jungle news in non-stop jabber

IF you had to tell your child what the pink cover that Mumbai gets every winters sounds like, what would you say? The answer, it seems is clash and grraw, in various permutations and combinations.

In a book titled The Jungle Radio: Bird Songs Of India, author Devangana Dash (R250), weaves a poem through a young girl Gul, around the many sounds that birds around us make. Out in an illustrated book that you can read and vocalise, it's a great way to get your child to get off the smartphone and watch out for the birds around them.

The book, published by Puffin Books, comes with illustrations that will also help you identify the birds. But, if like most of us, you live in a concrete jungle, the question remains: where do you find them? There's a list of 16 bird sanctuaries across different states that you could go to. There's also a list of websites where you can get a better audio of different bird calls. It just might help you keep your kid out of air-conditioned malls and inside naturally cooled forests during the next vacation.

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