A red-cheeked cordon-bleu.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images
A recent survey confirmed the disturbing trend of diminishing bird species and numbers in Kerala. I have noticed this phenomenon in Thiruvananthapuram, where I grew up in the 1960s.
The ancestral house was in a compound with many trees and I had seen paradise flycatchers with trailing tails and golden yellow orioles. Once a purple sunbird had built its pendulous nest at the front entrance, unaffected by our frequent movements. Over the past five decades, the compound changed to accommodate more houses with less greenery. A white-breasted kingfisher and a magpie robin became occasional visitors at dusk.
During the COVID pandemic, I spent a lot of time looking at birds from the balcony of my fourth-floor apartment in Jamshedpur. A jamun tree at eye level was a favourite with many starlings, coppersmith barbets, bank mynahs and yellow-footed green pigeons along with the familiar purple sunbirds, golden orioles and magpie robins. The most exciting discovery was a pair of barn owls that would come out from their hideout beneath my balcony.
Once it was holding a recently caught rat and another time it perched a few feet away from me.
Winter spotting
In winter, I spotted small migratory birds, greenish warbler the size of a jamun leaf and a Taiga flycatcher. Last year, I sensed trouble as some men walked around inspecting the old building under the jamun tree. They bought the land, demolished the building and pruned the trees.
Over the next few months, a hotel was built and all that I could see from my balcony was an expansive bright blue metal roof and a few branches of the jamun tree. The hotel exterior was lit up in the evenings and flashed bright colours. The modification led to the disappearance of birds without any protest except a pair of rose-ringed parakeets. Inept and sad, I missed the barn owls the most.
I sought birds in the peripheries of the city and included birdwatching in all my travels. Though I spotted many species, the serene comfort of bird watching from the balcony was lost. Recently I got an opportunity to visit Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on a medical mission and looked forward to seeing some African birds.
Citing safety concerns, the hosts forbade us from venturing anywhere beyond the hospital and the hotel. The hotel downtown was amid many high-rise buildings and we were surprised to find weaver birds among the creepers at the entrance and long-tailed speckled mouse birds on a tree nearby. As I reached my room, a Marabou stork flew past the window and I could see a bulky Hadada ibis on a field across the road, its wings glistening in sunlight. The next day, we went to the hospital.
Established in 1922, most of the buildings in the sprawling complex were old, single-storeyed with stone or bare brick exterior and sloping roofs in earthy colours. The abundance of native trees and the typical tall African cacti gave the feeling of a resort. Almost every tree had nests of weaver birds. In between the built structures, there were large patches of mixed indigenous plants. We spotted more than 40 species of birds on the premises of the 500-bed hospital with a daily 1,500 outpatients.
African paradise flycatchers flew around the new emergency building, mynah-like Abyssinian thrushes hopped on the green patches between the wards and cute little birds, red fire finch and turquoise blue-colored red-cheeked cordon-bleu, were busy pecking at crumbs in the waiting areas. Tacazze sunbirds circled around the flowering trees flashing iridescent blue black metallic colours as the afternoon sunlight fell on them. I had a double bill of a successful medical mission and delightful birdwatching. The abundance of birds and coexistence with humans could be attributed to the nurturing of native flora and unobtrusive merging of buildings within the ecosystem.
Building practices that conserve local biodiversity is the need of the hour and birds will indicate to us ēclearly if our actions are promoting harmonious coexistence or otherwise. We have to listen.
Published – January 05, 2025 04:12 am IST
