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The ever-so-sweet vulture culture

Atop a silver oak in the Civil Lines is a nest of vultures. The whole day long the mother broods over her little ones from a nearby branch and keeps away predators. A flap of her massive wings is enough to scare away the pestering crows and the kites that try to swoop down on the untidy nest.

One evening one saw the head of the family land on the nest with almost the air of a tired Delhiwallah back home from work. The little one looked up at him as much in hunger as in affection, one thought, but the byword was discipline, and the lady of the nest saw to it that this was maintained. She pushed the offspring away, and, sitting beak to beak with her mate, passed on the eats in the proper order from the eldest to the youngest. The fledging probably digested it better that way. One hasn’t seen him misbehaving after that. Whoever said vultures were a greedy lot was not telling the whole truth after all.

Hawks, meanwhile, have built their nest on a silver oak in the St. Xavier compound on Raj Niwas Marg. Last year’s young ones have not come with them but they have another brood or two. You can see them looking up at the sun the whole day long, and in the evening when their parents return with the day’s pickings, you can hear them break out in gleeful cawing.

The old nest of the hawks three trees away has been taken over by their distant cousins, the crows. They have made it as untidy as only a crow’s nest can be. The mother crow keeps circling the trees and as soon as the vultures leave it, invades their new nest and steals as much as she can from the larder. It has a fledgling of its own, a sorry-looking bird which caws throughout the day, though it is fed generously by its mother and father, who fly home late in the evening.

Though relations between those who nest within a few feet of each other seem to be almost always strained, they are sufficiently good neighbours to sink their differences and join forces to drive away the black cat which stealthily climbs up to the lower branches of the trees at times.

Not far from the Civil Lines, a hawk swooped down upon a Shyama bird in Delhi this past week, caught her in its powerful claws and carried her to a tree. But the little bird wriggled out of its grasp and fell to the ground. A passer-by picked her up and seeing that she was badly hurt carried her to the Birds’ hospital in Chandni Chowk. Little “Shyama” is recovering now and with a little more tender care should be in the air in a few days.

This Birds’ Hospital is probably the only one of its kind in the Capital. Most of the birds are either old or injured and left to the care of the hospital by people not only from the city but also from neighbouring areas. Many of the birds admitted to the hospital are those which get entangled in electric or telephone wires. This usually happens during the monsoon when the skies are overcast and the birds have to come down from the air in a hurry because of a sudden shower or low clouds, or even a peal of thunder.

The inmates are mostly pigeons, doves and parrots. They even had a bulbul some time ago which was found below a bush in a New Delhi garden. She was in pretty bad shape and for days lingered between life and death. She recovered slowly, but when the mood sized her, she used to sing.

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