A crying Laughing Dove

 

Laughing doves chuckle cutely, hence named so. It’s endearing to have a laughing, rolling and yodeling call. But just like a comedian’s pain in the heart is always preceded by the rib-tickling laughter masking the facial features, a laughing dove’s cry also gets covered up by the rib-tickling sounding chuckle of theirs. Its sobbing, suffering cry still comes out as funnily rolling notes of a birdie chuckle. Pain camouflaged by vocal chords has both advantages and disadvantages. It saves you from mockery but at the same time robs you of sympathy that may still be there in some corner.

An eagle is for the aggressive majesty of power, domination and hunting. It looks majestic with its killer’s instinct, equipped with a hawk eye, hooked beak and razor-sharp talons. A dove is for peace. It’s a symbol of live and let live. It looks lovely with its innocent eyes, graceful walk and stoic demeanor. The eagle is for stealth and strength. The dove is for benevolent, peaceful and an unassumed life and living without much ripples on the canvas of existence. The eagle shrieks almost with a war cry. The dove coos for peace. As the two sides of the same coin of creation, they paint the picture of existence in their own ways. One as important as the other.

The laughing dove is seen, as usual, on its customary perch point on a rusted wire loop jutting out of the corner of a two storey house. His call is insistent and non-stop from dawn to dusk for the last few days. The irony is: even if a laughing dove is crying, it sounds like laughing. To those who don’t know his story, and there aren’t many who would have the time and inclination to be interested in the affairs of a dove, it is a mere love-bound chuckling laughter of the laughing dove. I but hear the pain of loss buried behind his insistent chuckle. He has lost his partner. Laughing doves are monogamous by the way. Like all monogamous birds, the loss of a partner is incalculable loss and many perish in the wake of their spouse’s death. The way he is mourning from dawn to dusk, I suppose he may not survive as well.

He seems determined to starve himself to death. I have seen him just once taking littlest mournful beak bites on the ground, the very same ground where they walked in lovely majesty picking out grass seeds and tiny insects when she was alive. Now he finds everything almost distasteful.

A sparrow couple was almost fruitlessly trying to put the foundational sinews on a very narrow edge of the wooden rafter in the cattle barn. Feeling their plight, I fixed a cardboard box on a not-in-use rusted ceiling fan. It just hung there as a cobwebbed chandelier of the cattle world with its connection wire broken. However, there were no birdy takers for the beautiful nesting house that stayed mournfully inviting and empty. There seems to be some natural intelligence at work. The birds have seen so many ceiling fans whirring death, doom and destruction to the feathered lives. So they shirked from taking the offer. Then the dove couple, egged on by their simplicity, made use of it. They put the first dry twigs not inside but outside on it to fructify my attempt at helping bird nesting after almost three years.   

The nest was—it is still there with the fossilized seal of their love in it—a very flimsy platform of dry twigs of neem branches. Marking their lovely milestone in their love story, she laid two eggs. On the path of creation, there are pulls to destruction at all points. Then the mankind’s cousin came as a challenger to the forces of creation from the side of destruction. He climbed into hang with one hand from the iron grater and pluck away the booty, one egg. I reached on time and came within the fraction of a second to turn his bum redder with a strike. He escaped unscathed. I checked and found one fresh hatchling lying there as a tiny ball of winged prospects. As long as there is some semblance of encouragement in the nest to propel their paternal instincts, the loss hardly mattered to them and they kept the routine feeding and customary watch over the predators. I have heard that the nesting adults even feign injury to distract and draw away predators from the nest.

How should a laughing dove change the amplitude of its yodeling notes to turn it into a mourning call instead of a customary chuckle? His call is the same like before. He sounds like wooing a female even though he is mourning the death of his life partner. But my knowledge of his loss turns me aware of the pain carried by these notes. He has the unwavering spirit to mourn and cry till eternity. I have the heart to feel his pain. His pain doesn’t go unacknowledged at least.

The mourner had once fallen in love. His cooing calls were reciprocated by her, the one who is gone now. Attractive was his courtship display. His adolescent wings catapulted him into the lofty spheres of love, lust and procreation. He launched his infatuated self into the air with his wing clapping, making romantic, charged sounds and majestically glided down in a gentle arc to display his youth and coming of age. He was very emphatic and impressive in his display of masculinity. The crazy lover followed her with his head bobbing accompanied with seductive cooing. And all this blizzard of passion still sounded funny because from both extremes of pleasure and pain a laughing dove has the same means to voice his emotions, his cuddly laughing cooing.

Emboldened by her attention, he started pecking his folded wings in “displacement-preening” to solicit her surrender to the physical manifestation of love. She accepted by crouching and begging for food, a gentle prelude to her acceptance of him as her chicks’ Pa and a provider of safety and companionship. With abounding passion he indulged in courtship feeding before conjugal ride and the beginning of a monogamous matrimony. They preened each other. They made a fantastic pair of long-tailed pigeons with rufous and black chequered necklace. Their chuckling calls, a low rolling croo-doo-doo-doo-doo involving a fluctuating amplitude, vibrated on the airy canvas for love and procreation. In their corner of the cosmos, they germinated a soft ripple of pining love and robust care. He as a possessive, jealous fellow won’t allow her to go too far. If she foraged far, his cooing cascaded to her ears, tying her with the invisible cord of his attention and insecurity, forcing her lilac tinged neck and head to turn in his direction and she would whoop down to be with him. Cutely they walked on the ground and ate grass seeds and other vegetable matter and tiny ground insects like ants, termites and beetles. Docile and fairly terrestrial, they foraged on the ground, their reddish legs giving them the gentlest of steppings. In contrast, they took flight with a lot of noise followed by their swift and straight flight with regular beats of wings and an occasional sharp flick of the wings. All this and more wrote a beautiful chapter in romance.

They looked almost similar in appearance save his slightly bigger size and his pinkish-brown under-side slightly colorful to her paler one. His bluish grey band on the wing was bigger than her’s. These are the features that helped me in recognizing him as the surviving mourner.

A few days back, I found the chick had died. It was a mere dried whitish tiny tissue lying in the nest. It but still kept them bound to the duties and they hovered around, walking gracefully in the courtyard around the flower beds and plants to get their breakfast, lunch and pre-dusk dinner. The two of them were always together. Inseparable. The rest of the world loses its significance if a pair in love has their world full within themselves. It made such a beautiful sight of a love-smashed bird pair.

As a birdwatcher the sight of a new bird in the area is very assuring and alluring. Four days back, the sight of an eagle on a nearby keekar pretty much excited me. The eagles are rare now, hardly seen within the village boundaries. It’s a majestic powerful bird, the sign of aggression and playing on the front-foot with assurance and confidence. I knew an eagle has no mission other than hunting. But even this knowledge cannot stop you from watching it with an appreciating eye. He looks regal. Royalty always has had claws hidden beneath the regal attire and extravagant show on the surface. No wonder he looked a veritable King of the birdy world. An eagle can afford to be restful on a tree. He appeared perched up stoically almost with a carefree air. It was business as usual. Even the cantankerous crows didn’t bother too much over his transgression into their territory.

The doves with the dead dry chick in their nest walked as gracefully in the yard as before to welcome a fresh day in their winged life. Cutting the cool early morning air with his talons he swooped down and killed her. The yard was empty, so he didn’t feel in a hurry to fly away with the prey. He ate her right there. She was now just a scattered bloodied lump of wings and feathers. Her lover just could shriek in anger and pain in his laughing notes.

Her memories continue to reverberate through his fur and he is tirelessly cooing from all the perch points that bear the smell of their love as if to woo her out of death. He thinks she has ditched him and taken a new paramour. He is confident of his cooing display and thinks he can win her back. So he continues his painful laughing notes, his heart bruised and his masculinity embittered. Little does he realize that she has gone onto be a part of her hunter. She is no longer that docile bird of peace. She is reshaped as the steely nerves and power of talons to hunt now and not just get hunted down like before. 

He cries with the passion with which he had once wooed her to make her a part of himself and turn himself a part of her. Now a part of him has vanished. It is painful to see him survive as a fraction of himself. He may not survive as a monogamous bird. I but wish that some female, who has just come of age or has been unlucky like him to lose her partner and is ready to accept a mate now, takes his crying coos as the teasing cooing of a challenging male who is trying to break the folds of feminine inhibitions and hesitation.