Sharing my Space with some Natural Claimants

 

Time is frozen in the leafy green verve of a fresh breezy morning. The night blooming jasmine is clad in bright green new set of leaves, after the spell of autumnal detachment when it shed each and every leaf and looked like a brooding old man. Now it's young again and sways to intoxicated gusts of monsoon winds. A beautiful moment gets copied one year down the line. The natives return. It's a spotted munia couple. They are striking rusty brown birds having a chessboard pattern on the breast. They trill even more beautifully.

It's the same branch and the same section of twigs where they had set up a nest last year. I am sure, it's the same couple. If I am right then birds seem to have more fidelity than humans because meantime millions of men and women must have parted ways on bitter notes over trivial, funny things. Well, none of my business to comment on our foolish ways.

I enjoy the making of this irregular globular nest. It's a masterwork in deception. To a predator it would appear like a broken, abandoned nest. In reality, the eggs will be safe in an inner chamber. The father ferries big sinews of grass. He has to pay for his lusty overtures...haa haa. The mother is busy in decorating interiors. She has to pay even bigger for her emotional surrender. Last year, the hatching wasn't successful. A squirrel came—she still does—visiting the tree. She is just a guest, not a resident of the tree. I enjoyed the sight of her old-womanish tiktikking. Little did I know they are egg stealers also! So she must have been the culprit last time.

With this addition to my knowledge about the ways of squirrels, I’m better prepared this time. I will keep an ear for the agitated notes of the little birds to find out the cause of distress, like I did yesterday around noon. Busy in writing, I heard the plightful softest of notes and ran out to find out the squirrel scouting around the new house in making. Recalling the last year episode, I chased it away, lost my meditative balance also by the way. What to do? Have to support the underdogs. She is no longer a welcome guest. A birdie life saved is more important than a squirrel missing a meal. It seems so at least till I cross the final hurdles to beat the paradoxical plays of duality to see everything in the same way. Well, till then the squirrel has a tough time I tell you.

The spotted munia is a little docile bird that can manage faintly trilling notes even at its agitated most. Wait, the tree cannot miss its typical birdie song and dance. They co-share the little tree with a pair of tailorbird who have crafted a masterwork by stitching leaves to make a nest cup. They shout pretty loudly for their size. So the tree is under double occupancy. I hope they don’t start fighting like cantankerous humans in residential colonies.

I am determined on my mission born of emotions for the underdogs. If it results even in a bump on the lined back of the irritating tiktikking nuisance, whom I found cute earlier but now find a villain due to the addition to my knowledge, I hardly care. I have turned mean in following my basic instincts guiding my emotions for the beautiful birds. I know it will play truant many times. I am but ready for the job. I have a weapon also in mind to punish it with. In fact, I have taken out a flexible single strand of switch from my mother's bamboo broom. It's waiting for the culprit. Though it won't harm the squirrel critically, but I see it can definitely give her a painful back, if she messes with my birdie friends. All the best little couples. Let there be a successful episode in your love tale.

Things appear pretty normal with the usual humdrum till there is an itchy-tailed intruder on the scene. There is a literal blast of chirpy protests against this unsolicited visit. The bully, a male Indian Robin with rusty red rump and its itchy tail flicking, arrives on the tree. Probably it has not so fair intentions, otherwise why would the hosts raise such a storm of choicest abuses against the intruder. The tailorbird pair, half the size of the intruder, can fight—verbally of course—with more tenacity than even the most cantankerous aunty in your neighborhood. Their shrill notes have sharp talons man. What proficiency in quarreling!

Well, they have a right to do it. After all, they own this tree under the birdie constitution. They have their nest sewn up among three leaves. The tree belongs to them, of course. Even I, whose courtyard happens to keep rooting of the tree, have surrendered my rights of ownership after witnessing their vehement show of abusive lung power in protest against any effort to prune even those branches that are well away from their little nest and are of inconvenience to me. But then I can't match their quarrelsome capacity, so I have resigned myself to the fate of my face and head getting some brush against the irksome caressing of the branches. What to do? They own it completely as long as they have their family here.

The spotted munia couple also try to contribute to the protest, but the cute chocolate brown little beauties having chess pattern on their breast have such feeble jingling notes that you can't even make out their contribution to the noisy protest. It's like their sitar notes get lost in the humungous, buttock-busting notes of the biggest drums in the loudest discotheque in the maddest part of the world. Anyway, they also protest and flick from branch to branch. It pays to have quarrelsome neighbors sometimes. Isn't it? So the bully gets intimated. He flows away with a jarring note of typical chhhrrr accompanied by its ever-flicking tail.

These four residents of the small Parijat tree also throw expletives on the baddy squirrel who tries to get away with their eggs. However, she stands little chance as long as these noisy defenders are there. Agreed that they can't physically chase the fur-lined snoutish nuisance, but their verbal fight draws my attention sometimes and I go to add resources to the defending army. The very same age-old instinct to be with the underdogs! By the way, sometimes even a pair of purple sunbirds, the male's metallic blue sheen looking over the mundane dull colors of the female, joins the protests. A pair of oriental white eye, their notes hardly distinct among the commotion, also arrives on the scene. But they make bigger statements with their beautiful white-ringed eyes and flit with their square tails from branch to branch. Once in a while, even the most garrulous babblers also join the protesting chorus, thinking there must be a bigger common enemy to all, for example a snake. However, when they find that these tiny birds are overhyping the threat over almost a non-issue, they just take off angrily.

But man at least you expect a bit of reciprocation for your help. The other day, I am removing some wild growth in a corner away from the tree and there go these tailor birds again throwing choicest abuses in their birdie language. I even feel irritated. I have even surrendered my right to the tree and now you don't want me to touch anything in the whole yard, I whisper to myself. So now I am open to the idea that they have at least equal right over the courtyard also. What to do? These tiny, shrill loudspeakers can definitely send down jarring notes when they are angry!

In any case, it’s my gain. Once you learn to share these things with the natural claimants, life and living becomes easier. There will hardly be any big issues with a person who has learnt to let small birds and animals have their share of the environment around.