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.
