Survival, resilience: Birds nest amidst the monsoon deluge
We were out birdwatching in the drizzle, hoping to catch a glimpse of birds searching for food for their chicks. Even through the rain, there was movement in the trees, because hungry younglings don’t tolerate waiting. The almost unbearably sultry monsoon is also the time when many Indian birds build nests, raise chicks, and hunt for food for their brood.
As the rain comes down—sometimes in a torrent, sometimes in a trickle—featherless, naked-pink nestlings get soaked and carefully constructed nest architecture comes undone. It might seem that weeks of work, and young life itself, can be jeopardised.
Why then attempt nesting at a time that is so decidedly difficult? It’s because bird chicks need protein, and there is protein whizzing around during the monsoon. The surfeit of insects—some displaced from their burrows like red velvet bugs, some pursuing their own breeding cycles, like termites—are everywhere during the rains. Lizards wait near light sources, and birds hunt insects everywhere else.
That day, I witnessed an Indian paradise flycatcher, resplendent with his long tail, dart towards his nest. Pittas incubated, and other birds were active too: many-hued Small minivets went through the air like missiles, and the Common hawk cuckoo waited his turn. Ants that normally live in tree bark were running all over the ground, and other bugs, too numerous to count, also went around in a frenzy.
A tailorbird had a feather in his beak, perhaps to line his nest.
And birds often remind us how long they have been in the places we find them. In 1962, Captain NS Tyabji made nesting observations from Lodhi Gardens, Delhi: he noted the nesting of Tailorbirds, Hoopoes, Black drongos, Dusky crag martins, Common myna, Black-rumped flameback woodpeckers, Common woodshrikes, and more. Today, hoopoes and woodshrikes both are less than common in cities; we must at least conserve that what remains.
And to notice these life cycles, you don’t always need to be outdoors.
This August, from my home, I watched a Common myna feed her chicks. Through the rain, she flew to find food, returning to her screaming nestlings in a few minutes. They’d be mollified for a few seconds before shouting their demands again, and she would fly off for yet more morsel. The rain fell, the myna flew. It was a tale as old as time, and as new as the chicks that were just beginning to see the world.
Inside my door, black ants walked around, displaced by rains, looking for a place to find their bearings. There was the smell of mould somewhere, or perhaps it was mildew. Even wooden cabinets seemed to be coming to life as hosts.
In the garden, a mango seed I had planted threw out tentative, red-purple leaves. In just a few days, they had become a confident green.
Perhaps one day, this tree would have a myna nesting in it.
Neha Sinha
Conservation biologist and author
Views expressed are personal
Posts on X: @nehaa_sinha