White-spotted Fantail flycatcher (Rhipidura albogularis)

A wide spread resident bird of the Indian peninsula. One can never miss this little bird hopping and dancing in a garden, or a scrubby forest area.

I came across this bird in my sisters farm. In the corner of the farm was a clump of untouched bamboos. A very nice roosting and nesting place for the birds.  It was in these bamboos a pair of fantails had made a nest.  I made myself comfortable in the thorny surroundings of the bamboo and sat observing the bird activity.  To my surprise my presence near their nest did not seem to annoy the birds. One bird came and sat on the eggs, while the other kept on hawing flies nearby and merrily chirping all around me.  One my birding high was given to me by this bird, by perching on the toe of the outstretched limb. Remembering this after nearly twenty-five years today still gives me Goosebumps!

For the past 10 years now a pair of Fantails use my garden to make their nests. Sometime during mid May they make their appearance.  They spend two three weeks in courting and frolicking around, before they settle down to actual hard work of breeding. They normally start building their nest just before the onset of monsoon. The jackfruit tree is their most preferred nesting site. This tree is quite near to the rear entrance to my house, but the birds do not seem to mind our presence. The nest as many of us know is a neatly made cup.  I always used to wonder what do these little birds use to make this cup?  Last year these birds answered my question.  The bids de-bark the young tree branch. The brown bark is discarded. They extract the tender white fibres and use them with a saliva like secretion to make the cup. It is a very painstaking effort the little birds put in the bring their future generations in this world.

Generally small birds make their nests silently and secretly. They do not want their predators to know their nesting site.  The game of hide and seek is played in earnest by both the prey and the predators, for the winner gets life and looser death! The fantails don’t seem to care about the predators at all.  Every time one bird gets some fibre and puts it on the nest it gives its musical chirp from the nest itself, as if telling its partner I have done my bit now it is your turn.  The pair relies on its powers to shoo away predators. While these birds are nesting in my garden, it is out of bound area for the crows and the coucals. If a crow dares to come near the vicinity of the jackfruit tree both the fantails launch themselves in air like fighter jets and turn by turn keep pecking at the tail end of the crow.  The crow tries to fend off one attacker while the other hits out at its mark. The hit may not be painful but is insulting to the crow, which always leaves the area in disgust. The fantails are wise enough not to follow the crow leaving their nesting site unguarded.

Both parents take equal domestic responsibility from building the nest, incubating the eggs to feeding the young ones.  While one is attending to the domestic duties the other is always at an ear shot distance from the nest.  From May to October end my garden is practically ruled by these two little birds.  They ensure that there is never a dull moment from sun rise to sunset.

As I am writing this I can hear the merry calling of the Fantails from my window. They seem to urge us to take their example in  team work and apply it in our lives.

Text and photographs cannot be used without the permission of Jayant Deshpande.

To my wild Guru from the Urban world

House Sparrow – The friendly bird which has helped most of the children to grow up, teaching them morals through small stories, assisting them to eat their food, and of course playing with them. I was no different; I not only grew up with the friendly neighborhood sparrows, but also share a special bond with them.

My childhood days were spent in an old building called as a Wada. There were at least 50 sparrows inhabiting it along with us humans. There was an old Gujarati lady who took upon the task of feeding these birds with grain every day.  The building with mud based wall nearly of 2 ft wide and wooden beams provided plenty of spaces for the sparrows to make nests.

As a little boy I caught a fancy to these birds. Watching them patiently for hours on end through the window of my house, of course on days when we had no school.  The birds would welcome every sunrise with a very chirpy song, and begin their day by starting to look out for a meal. Waking up to the chirping of sparrows became a habit.

As a child I used to be engrossed watching them for hours, seeing them take a bath both in water and soft mud.  I also realised how the birds could be choosy about the grain to eat, also their preference to a cockroach over a grain of rice. I never could understand then why some sparrows sometimes preferred to eat grains of sand to rice. I used to think that like in we humans, there were some fools in sparrows as well. Sometimes a group of sparrows would unite and beat and chase a particular individual of their community.  Probably this was their way to punish a wrong doer in their community, I thought.

Sparrows were quite clumsy when it came to nest building. They simply used to keep adding to material to the same nest year after year. The nest used to get bigger that the support on which it was built and parts of the net would fall off as a result.  Some times to my disgust I would find eggs and young featherless chicks fall of the nest.  I used to try to try to put them back in the nest which was too high for my reach. On not being successful which those attempts tried to raise them, trying to make them comfortable on cosy cotton bed, only to find them dead the next morning. Upset at myself the next time I found such a chick I decided not to touch it and let have Mother Nature take her own course.   

Once I heard a din raised by the sparrows, I quickly ran out to the balcony to see what was happening the sparrows were fluttering their wings sitting up on a wire or any other safe perch and chirping differently, and then, I saw a feral cat passing by.  I found that the sparrows would make a particular din when they saw a cat and this was always true. That gave me a new game “Spot the Cat” whenever I heard that particular call from the sparrows.  The same game is still played only the sparrows are Langoors and the cat is a Tiger or a Leopard!

Quickly the child hood went by and today, after travelling over many forests in India I sit back and think that indeed I am indebted to the sparrows who taught me an lot on wild life behavior.  Rampant urbanization has now threatened the very existence of sparrows, a bird which has taught itself to coexist with the human beings. 

Lets to our best to help this common bird from not facing the ignomity of extinction from the fringes of our households.

Are the Leopards walking out of our children's lives ?

Leopards are known to be masters of adaptation! They succeeded where the mighty king of the jungle the Lions failed, ie co-existing with the invading Tigers!  That’s history, but now it looks like this magnificent animal will soon be history in the secondary forests, where once it was the uncrowned King!