Feeding pigeon in Kenyalang Commercial Complex

Today is our last day in Kuching. Tomorrow by this time we will be back to home sweet home in Tawau.

Feeding pigeon in Kuching

3:15 PM Mei Yin said goodbye to the pigeon. As usual we bring a pocket full of rice to feed them.

The square in front of the Kenyalang Commercial Complex (formally the Kenyalang Cinema) is a comforting space for the children. During our 1 week stay in Kenyalang Yin came almost every afternoon to feed a lively flock of pigeons. The full flock of pigeons numbered about 50.

We feed them with rice. Pigeon feeds in open ground far from bushes or trees. This is a distinctive characters from other birds.

Pigeons commonly show a very wide range of plumage variation

These street pigeons were once domestic pigeons of Kenyalan Park residents that have escaped encasement and returned to the nature. These born to be free animals find the ledges of the few buildings Kenyalang Commercial Complex perfect home.

Many city squares are famous for their large pigeon populations. Chun Xing may still remember the pigeon in the city square of Asuncion City, Paraguay. Those years in Paraguay, each time our family went to Asuncion, we will not fail to drop by the city square just for the pigeon. And it was in Paraguay that I developed great interest for pigeons.

Yin and I came almost every day. Each time followed by different companions who shown interest to join in. Below is photo on 31 May Saturday when Jerolyn Yeo and Vanessa Yeo came alone to the feeding. Jerolyn and Vanessa watch the birds descending from the space while Yin throw rice to the open ground.

Highlight on the house. In the middle you can see two attached houses under a same blue color roof. Only the right corner house (highlighted) is my father house, the left house belong to our neighbor.
The view here is the back side of the houses. The front doors are on the other side. Because this is the back yard of the houses, it looks gloomy. When view from the front, the houses and the lane are bright and clean.
The green tree on the right is a young mango tree bearing sweet mango. This young tree is the second and only mango tree surveyed today.

The concert in the right lower corner of this photo is today the car park for the Wet Market just beside. But in those day 1972 when the family just moved in that piece of land was a grassy field where the young men play football in the evening. My mother, being a farmer in heritage, love land and planting, so she occupied a small piece of the fertile soil (which is now the concrete in the above photo) and developed into a household farmland of ducks, chickens and vegetable and a mango tree (the 1st mango tree).

In 1978 I returned to Kuching brightly. That first mango tree already bearing fruit. One day mother asked Siew Don to slice a mango fruit for me to eat. I finished the whole fruit. It was a sweet mango.

Today that old mango tree had long gone so as the farm yard of ducks and chickens. And in the place is this concert car park which you now see in the above photo. And those young men who once played food ball on that green field by now are grand fathers. But they memory may still remember that small farm yard of my mother beside their foot ball field. They should be able to remember a hard working Hakka lady spend time tending that farm yard................. and their ball constantly drop into this piece of farm yard of duck and chick ..... and when they pick back their ball smeared with a layer of dunk..........