There are birds that are so at home on power transmission lines, that they weave their professional and personal lives around them. They may be gathered on them in a horizontal huddle, preen each other sitting on these aluminium benches in the skies, and launch their hunting expeditions from the perch, zeroing in on flying insects in a divebombing attack.
Some birds even raise their young in nests they have built in crooks of power posts and pylons and traffic signals. With their social and hunting behaviours closely associated with these wires, we have come to see them as birds of the wire.
Power transmission wires don’t go far back in time, and have a traceable history, and it may be fascinating to know how these birds meet their need to live, socialise, hunt from perches in times pre-dating these modern props of existence.
Obviously, it would have been trees. Certain bird species would also have had a preference for certain types of trees, before the adaptation happened. Certain bird species may stick to both proclivities, the new and the old, choosing spaces that provide for both.
The ashy woodswallow seems to be one such bird. On certain sections of East Coast Road, before Mamallapuram, I have seen the ashy woodswallow gathered on power transmission wires in small groups. A recent sighting was in a border area between Thiruvidanthai and Therkupattu.
This bird has a preference for palm trees. Sections of ECR closer to Mamallapuram are dotted with a striking number of palm and coconut trees.
At the height of summer, at places like Pattipulam, there will be vendors by the roadside doing brisk business selling palmyra fruits and tender coconuts.
That seems to explain why it is easy to catch of glimpse of the ashy woodswallow in these parts.
Long awaited
In the previous column, there was a plaintive note about the low occupancy levels at the wetlands. So, let me point out that the migratory ducks have started “squatting” on the Perumbakkam wetland in more numbers, but there are still signs that this is going to be a low-count season in terms of migratory birds.
This is a fortnightly column on the resident and visiting birds of Chennai
