Bold & Beautiful

Lockdown is not a bane but a boon for birds and bird lovers, writes Indrani Ghose

It is so pleasant to start the mornings with wake up calls of birds and one that stands out is not cock-a doodle-do but shrill repetitive calls of tur-r-r-r tutur-totur-totur of the Brown-headed Barbet.

These birds are tiny, measuring just about 27 cm and well camouflaged. It is very hard to spot them. The green of their body merges well with the leaves, while their brown claws are a perfect match with the brown branches on which they perch. Their white cheeks and brown heads mimic sunlight and shade. Mother Nature has provided them with all characteristics to evade attacks by bigger species and by humans.

Bengaluru is a fertile breeding ground for the Brown-headed Barbets. As the winters begin to recede, from late January or early February, they begin wooing their mates with incessant calls. Once they pair up, they start building their nests. Often they scoop out holes in barks of soft wooded trees.

I was in total disbelief when I saw one of them walking up the tree, defying gravity. Gripping with their sharp claws to find the right spot to nest, the Barbet kept going up, down and sideways of the tree trunk. Finally, the little architect Barbet, having found the right spot, started pecking away at the trunk furiously.

Fight of survival is rampant in the avian world and I was witness to such a serious fight between the Barbets — the heroes of my story — and some screeching parrots. The Barbet couple that I was following regularly in my apartment complex had scooped out a decent hole in a silver oak tree trunk when they were ferociously driven out by a couple of parrots.

I wondered later if it was the ear-shattering screeching sounds of the parrots that drove off the Barbets or was it their physical might. The parrots happily laid eggs in that stolen property and hatched cute parrot babies… Well, that is a different story.

After the Barbets were driven out of their home I lost all hope of spotting them, but I could hear their calls very often and knew they were around. Once in a while, one of the Barbets would dart out from the dense leaves, fly with a smooth rising and falling form, and disappear in an equal sudden manner.

During March-April, the Barbet couples lay eggs, 3 to 4 in super hidden, hard to find nests. Both parents take turns incubating the eggs and feed the chicks when they hatch.

In the last week of April, I found one Barbet tugging at semi-ripe Jungle Jalebi fruits (also called the Madras Thorn fruit). That was a sign the Barbet chicks having hatched and the parent birds trying to desperately gather food for them.

However, the sight of their nest eluded me. I waited patiently for the Barbets to surface with their chicks. I was reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote: “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience. Nature does not hurry but everything is accomplished,” so said Lao Tzu.

So waiting is what I did!

And then, my patience was rewarded. At a distance on the branches of the Silver Oaktree, I spotted them. A mother Brown-headed Barbet and her not-so-confident, partially grown chick were seated on a branch just across my balcony. Whoa, what a sight!

Like always I was armed with my camera. Now the confusion was should I feast my eyes on the mother and baby or shoot them feasting on the berries with my lens.

Within seconds of these thoughts crossing my mind, the mother bird popped a berry into the juvenile’s mouth and after a few seconds, she flew off. Now the story takes an interesting sad turn.

From what I could see, the juvenile Barbet wasn’t able to gulp down the berry, it was too big for its small mouth. It sat still for some time, then started shifting the berry within its beak when, plonk, the berry fell off its mouth.

All this was over before you would have finished reading the above few lines. Oh! The disappointment and blank look it had on its face! I am sure if it could shed tears it would have wailed. I wonder when the baby Barbet got its next meal because the mother bird had flown away content that she had fed her child.

With a little bit of patience and perseverance, it is possible to witness many such dramas in the lives of urban birds.