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Magazine
EXPERIENCE
Houseguests
THEODORE BASKARAN
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Being a reasonable host with a useable garden ensures a steady flow winged guests and a peek into the everyday details of avian antics.
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Solemn-looking Oriental white eyes would land and assiduously pick off the tiny, winged insects clustered under the leaves.
Photo: Theodore Baskaran
Sheer Entertainment: Parakeets and the Oriental white eye (below)
It was only when they came to lunch for the third day running, punctually at one o’clock that I realised I had been behaving like a boorish host, barely acknowledging their presence outside the dining room window and greedily continuing with my
meal. A small band of solemn-looking but otherwise happy-go-lucky Oriental white eyes would land on the lagerstroemias, flit amongst its branches and assiduously pick off the tiny, winged insects clustered under the leaves. Then they’d dive into the nearby nimbu tree, usually kept company by a pack of around 20 or 25 house sparrows, which everyone says are becoming harder to find. But it got me thinking. The garden outside is maybe 40 ft by 30 ft. probably less, and I wondered how many avian houseguests had availed of (and abused) the facilities it — and the house — had provided over the years.
Memorable soap
Most memorable certainly was the magnificent soap opera put up by two couples of sparrows, complete with its cast of two-timing hens, jealous husbands, beaten up wives and a fittingly bloody finale on the verandah floor, with the combatants locked in lethal battle for hours altogether. Close on its heels came the shouting match by two glossy, blood-eyed koels on the bottlebrush, over a nervous female who, needless to say, sensibly slunk off with a third suitor while her two admirers yelled themselves silly. For sheer entertainment there’s nothing to beat parakeets — the rose-ringed as well as the plum-headed — which, like a troupe of circus clowns, would put on a side-splitting performance while hanging upside down from cable wires strung across the buildings. The neighbours’ guava tree would be raided in pin-drop silence however and the number of birds rocketing out of it when flushed was always astonishing. Quite oblivious of alleged “Indian” traditions and culture and sentiments, they also flirt and neck outrageously in full public view, on one enlightening occasion, overseen by a third bird which had apparently taken over the role of a coach!
Many birds have nested in the garden. Several years ago, a pair of white-cheeked bulbuls nested in the hedge; in recent times it’s usually the red-vented and red-whiskered bulbuls that do so. The tall, dying, fish-tail palm has been home to a pair of magpie robins this summer and for two consecutive years there have been purple sunbirds setting up home, once bang outside the drawing room window, and once in the front porch — both drastically public places and prone to vandalism from monkeys. The collard doves too have nested in the rubber tree, and regularly spilled their eggs. Several years ago, an ashy prinia nested in one of the potted plants, only to have its home torn to shreds and the nestlings devoured by crows. After an evening’s distress and grief, the pair proceeded to build a new home in the neighbours’ garden the next morning.
These days the jungle babblers seem to be in an exceptionally stern and investigative mood. They’ll come bouncing up, all fluffed up and ferocious and bang on the glass doors and windows harshly ordering you to open up, so that they can no doubt turn over your mattresses to check for hidden stashes of ill-gotten creepy-crawlies. Some of them, alas, (interns probably!) are very new on the job and will want to take the easy way out and crouch beaks open, shiver their wings and beg for tidbits from their seniors. Neighbours — who have since up and left — at one point used to put out birdseed regularly, attracting a flock of white-throated munias, several of which came attired in hues of gold, blue and red — lucky dyed escapees from the bird market, or birds that had been bought and “given” their freedom, so that their benefactors could score brownie points with the one above. Sometimes they would be watched over — and occasionally ambushed — by the shikra, hiding in the nimbu tree like a silent assassin.
Chatty and gossipy
Put water out for the birds in summer and you can be sure the mynas will turn up rather in the manner of barflies: Not only for a drink, but also to soften up hard crusts of bread, to bathe and to spend the hot afternoons in idle gossip by the cool dish. There are some, of course, whose visitations are not quite welcome no matter how beautiful they may be — peacocks which clean up the nasturtiums and a lot else; this summer a peahen even brought her two tiny chicks along and was teaching them the tricks of the trade, until politely shown the way out. In winter there have been the NRIs, gravely polite black redstarts and white wagtails sauntering about the lawn like property brokers, and grey-headed canary flycatchers down from the hills, though these sadly don’t seem to be as regular in their visits as they once were. (Or hopefully it’s just the bad-host syndrome again and I have failed to keep track of them!)
And then there have been cases of birds arriving for rest and recreation or seeking asylum. Young kites have crashed landed twice; in one case the traumatised bird played dead before making a successful dash for freedom. Finally, a young barn owl that landed with a thump just outside the dining room windows, as a mob of crows hunted for it, cawing hoarsely. It stayed but a few minutes, enough to recover its nerve and then took off for its next safe-house. Next time it turns up I’ll be sure to have a dead mouse ready!
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