Chicks can grow into pretty dangerous things. The last one we nursed, a kite nestling rescued by my son, besides scratching and bleeding me, even did additional damage by overturning precious glass artefacts.
There is a huge population of birds in Bangalore, but the first flock that we really encountered and observed were the Kites that hovered near the Johnson market of Richmond Town. It was fascinating to see them swooping down through the city smog, ducking the speeding vehicles, stealing silently overhead to dive deftly to lift a prized piece of waste meat from the market dump.
In Malleshwaram, we watch Flying foxes, hundreds of them, taking off at dusk from the groves of Institute of Science, fly out over Sankey Tank towards Rajaji nagar for their night hunting. There are more flying foxes here than in the forests of Dahanu, our other home, where generations of our neighbors decimated the entire local population, by expert use of shot guns, slingshots and arrows and an inexpert definition of ‘pests’.
I haven’t visited the Parrots near Ulsoor lake in a long time, but I clearly remember the loud clamour at dusk, the cackling green dog-fights in the sky, the flourish of their group dives, and the unexpected green and white splatter on my face.
Sparrows and Crows and Bee-eaters and koels all have regularly swung by our balcony to nibble at the herbs or out of sheer curiousity, looking for nesting areas.
Unlike Bombay, the other city of birds, there are very few pigeon centres, so to speak, in Bangalore. Like the one in the middle of Dadar market near the station where there are atleast 200 resident pigeons, who are fed by charity of individuals and maintained by a pigeon lover for a few decades now.
I saw a pigeon chick today, dislodged from its nest, that fell off a tree being cut down to make way for the new armada of small cars and smaller people that live in this city.
I was away for only a month, I returned to find, and I counted, at least 16 ancient trees on my regular routes, have gone, disappeared! The small people have even eaten into the golf club grass, so that there small cars can go to the airport, to the malls, to their small homes and small lives.
I looked at the chick for a long time, it was a pigeon chick for sure, grey and mushed up, hurt and angry, squawking with fear, screeching even as a young girl moved in to recover it. This chick was mad. And I could hear other really angry birds wailing eerily above my head, and I thought, sooner than later the chicks will get their revenge. The small people in their small cars better watch out. Chicks can grow into pretty dangerous things.
(Photo - Egrets, Cranes and ducks at dusk at Sankey tank, Bangalore)
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