Learning from the birds

A round our home there are many trees and plants. I take special care not to cut even a single tree. Therefore many birds seem to think our home is theirs too.

Last year, a pair of sunbirds built their nest, hanging from one of the hooks fixed on the ceiling of our verandah. One of them laid two eggs and they brought up the chicks. This year, a pair of bulbuls built their nest on a swinging chair, which I used to make my daughter sleep when she was a kid. Three eggs were laid and the chicks were reared. My daughter used to sleep only if I put her on my lap, sitting in the swinging chair. Now the chair is not used but is still there hanging. The birds saw that as an ideal place.

The way they built the nests was remarkable. The birds destroy nothing to build them. Only human beings destroy everything to build homes —rivers by mining sand, hills by quarrying rocks, and trees and plants too. When I observed the nests, especially those of the bulbuls, I was surprised to see the technique. The birds used cobwebs as adhesive to stick the twigs and fibres of the outer layers together.

As it was vacation time, we decided to provide the birds full freedom to incubate the eggs and look after the fledgling. We left our home and spent two weeks in the ancestral home of my wife. By the time we returned, the nest was empty.

Many birds I used to see regularly in my childhood are not seen or heard anymore. It seems some birds are trying to survive even by building their nests in and around human homes. Let us help them survive around us by filling the compounds of our homes with trees and plants and giving them shelter and food (by planting trees that bear fruits).

The unsustainable “progress” and “development” that humans pursue pose a great threat to the environment and biodiversity. Let’s try to be sustainable before it is too late, and save the world. Chief Seattle is quoted as having said more than 100 years ago: “What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts soon happens to man. All things are connected.”

lscvsuku@gmail.com