Birdie, Birdie! Where Art Thou?

As I take my morning walk in my terrace, I am invariably surrounded by the sight of birds stretching their wings, screeching, cooing or cawing, to begin their day’s flight for food. Being in a city, the only birds that I see are crows, pigeons and parrots. Occasionally, I come across a lone mynah, crooning away in the fading twilight.

What happened to the horde of other winged species? Where are the teeny-tiny sparrows, lovingly named chitu-kuruvi in Tamil? Flitting here and there, pecking a grain of rice with its tiny beak, hovering about on little brown wings, where is the country sparrow? I remember having an English lesson on Sparrows, a story on why the male sparrow’s breast is black- because the female sparrow asked the male one for Kajal for her beautiful eyes. The little male sparrow flew far and wide to get the kajal, but since he forgot to get a storage box, he chose to take it in his breast. Finally, the female sparrow put the kajal in her eyes and as a token of his love, the male sparrow’s breast still remained black. Where is this lovable species???

Where are the swifts and swallows, nicknamed Rettai Vaal Kuruvi for their forked tails? Where are these lithe and nimble creatures that swish past us in a jiffy to sit on the rooftops or aerial tops? Swifts and Swallows abound in children’s tales both in the East and West. My fascination for these little birdies increased with the number of stories I read in Misha, a Russian magazine in English for children. I can even remember some illustrations from those stories, they seem to be have been etched into my childhood memories.

And what of those other unnamed little coloured cousins of the sparrows – in varied hues of yellow, blue, green and red? Where are those little colour balls that used to sit on the window-sills and faithfully answer my dad’s mimicry calls?

Where are those weaver-birds that used to skillfully make such soft yet strong nests out of tree-shoots and cotton on the trees surrounding the house? I remember my dad showing us a carefully preserved nest, which had been collected after the chicks had flown away. What workmanship!! Other than the main hole, not a single tear was to be seen. The small sticks and cotton were arranged so well that they seemed to have been knitted.

Gone are the days when people in the house would collect paddy with husk from the rice separately and store it to feed the birds. Gone too are the days when no one would disturb the sparrow’s nest if it had made one or started one anywhere inside the house. Gone with those days too are the very acts of simple love that we shared with these gentle creatures.

Researchers tell us that with the coming of the computer age, the electro-magnetic waves proved that tad bit too much for these gentle creatures and that the radiation even proved fatal for them. I can only lament thus:

Birdie, Birdie, where art thou?
Hast thou flown past
Dreading the age that moves so fast?
Wilt thou come
And build a nest in my home,
That peace be to all
Ere man causes his own downfall.
Birdie, birdie, where art thou?

P.S.: Apologies for using Tamil names in the post. I’m not aware of the generic Hindi names for those birds. Kindly bear with me.

 

Vijima,

Thanks for being the first one to give me fb. It's really great that you have chittu kuruvis visiting you. I have not seen them for so long a time now. Crows are abundant and they come to our kitchen at specific times in the day to get food. If none of us are there in the kitchen, it will caw and caw and caw until someone puts a biscuit or some rice. There are some 5 to 6 crows that come everyday. So, I'm not missing the crows.

 

Thank you for your fb, Sri Sir. There is a patch of open land behind our apartment building. During the migratory season, whenever it rains, we see a lot of crane-like birds in the temporary marshland that the open patch becomes. My friend from Pondicherry said that they were locally called 'nolla-madaiyan'. It was so funny to hear. Last year, I visited Vedanthangal during the season and after having a gala time there looking at the various storks, pelicans, herons and even owls, I realised that maybe the nolla-madaiyan could be a distant cousing of the 'egrets'. We had taken the services of a guide to look closely at the birds, and seeing our enthusiasm, he took extra pains to show us all the varieties of the birds there in Vedanthangal. He was the one who spotted the owls, 2 small ones, perched in the branches of a tree, hidden from sunlight and human view. We could not spot them with our naked eyes. When he showed them with his high-powered binoculars, we could see them as clearly as if they were in our palm. That was one of my very fulfilling trips, little things that make life enjoyable. The people there are very protective of the migratory birds and woe betide any tourist that makes a noise. Even before entering the area, tourists are warned to be very quiet so as to not disturb the nesting birds. It is a spectacle to see flocks of birds lifting off together at sunrise and coming down together at sunset.

As I read your fb, I could not but help wonder if we could only see sparrows in the museums or zoos or in bird sanctuaries like Vedanthangal henceforth.