In search of a safe place to nest
RANJIT LAL
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For two summers, the sunbirds have been trying to nest. But sadly, both times their efforts were in vain.
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PHOTO: RANJIT LAL
HOMEMAKER: Busy building its nest.
Last summer, much to my delight a purple sunbird began building her nest on the bougainvillea creeper outside the drawing room window. I watched her whiz to and fro busily, from my usual armchair, thinking hey man this is how birding should be done.
As usual, it was the female who did all the work — her husband would show up once or twice during the day, do his pop star routine to flatter her and vanish for the rest of the day. Actually, it wouldn't have been a good idea if he had hung around, making such a song and dance, or even volunteered to help. Remember, he's all decked up in sequined purple and midnight blue — with scarlet and yellow armpits — and easy to catch the eye of a cat or a crow.
Moving in...and out
Anyway, the nest was completed within a fortnight and frankly if you took your eyes off it, you could miss it, even if you were staring at it from three feet away. It hung there, like a small bag of rubbish entwined with cobweb. And I found I could sneak up really close from inside the drawing room and take pictures even with the window open without the bird realising a thing. Alas, tragedy struck. I came down one morning to find the nest completely destroyed — just a few sad wisps of straw and cobweb dangled from what might have become a home.
The rhesus monkeys that lived in the cemetery next door had decided to do a MCD destruction act more efficiently than the MCD ever has. Oh well, that was that I thought — even as I could hear the poor sunbird tweet plaintively nearby. Some weeks later, to my astonishment the sunbird returned and started building a new nest. But her heart was really not in it and she gave up after a bit — or maybe it was now just too late in the season for nesting.
This summer a sunbird turned up again — and I like to think it was the same one.
She chose a hanging plant basket dangling from the front porch as her site, and paid little heed to the comings and goings in and out of the front door, a few feet away.
Most people who rang the doorbell, anyway never spotted her little hutment. After the external structure was complete she began installing the soft furnishings — feathers and cotton fluff and the like.
She'd arrive with her beak full, disappear inside, and turn around and sit down and wriggle a bit, to settle it down and ensure that she was comfy.
Another try
I could only photograph her by standing quietly outside the front door, but found that she didn't quite approve of my paparazzi activity — so called it off. She was soon incubating her eggs, but unfortunately as I was rather busy those days I wasn't able to keep tabs on her properly.
And then one day I noticed that she wasn't there anymore. I don't think her eggs hatched, for surely I would have noticed her frantic comings and goings as she fed her nestlings.
I don't think a cat got to the nest, because it seemed untouched. A snake perhaps? I like to think not, I doubt anyone from the house scared her away — most of the household staff were her admirers.
Perhaps her eggs were addled. Or perhaps she herself had become the victim of a cat or a crow — while out foraging.
But it just goes to show how difficult and challenging it is for these creatures to rear families successfully at the best of times.
At any rate, her nest is still there, swinging gently in the breeze. And I am thinking of hanging a "To Let" notice outside it, in the hope that she — or any other sunbird — might take up residence again.
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