Spring
(Written in March 2019)
It’s spring! Even if temperatures are hovering in the ominous high 30s already, the birds of my neighbourhood are cooing and courting and getting it on, to paraphrase the immortal Marvin Gaye.
A pair of red vented bulbuls have been flirting all morning on the young gulmohar outside my window. The female is acting elusive and the male has started to look a little desperate. A trio of older, scruffy and jaded looking crows are sharing the branches with them. They aren’t cawing, just watching them with cocked heads and quizzical expressions. Cynics wondering what the fuss is all about…
The Magpie Robin is adding daily to his song. He arrives in my backyard mid February with a single questioning note. Some unheard response prompts the male to add trills and scales to his call until today he is giving me a preview of a 30 second masterpiece. Then he splashes down into the water left on the balcony and fussily cleans off his black and white tuxedo. A few flips of his tail and he’s off to sing up the competition.
The parrots and sparrows squabble over the bird feeder. The sparrows are elegant and assertive. The hens much more so – their babies have already arrived and the pressure is on to provide three dozen square meals a day. One mama has even begun bringing her almost fully grown chick to the buffet. He sits, mouth open, while she stuffs grain into his mouth in a harrassed manner. I imagine her thinking, “please let him fly away soon – then I can clean up the nest and convert it into a hen house”. The cocks fool around a little but are quick to take their turn at pecking the jowar-bajra-rice mixture. Sparrows are my favourite balcony visitors. Friendly yet feisty. They chatter sweetly and keep an eye on me.
But the parrots! Raucous, rough and rambunctious. They clown around on the feeder, pulling at each other’s tail feathers, using their beaks as an extra limb to climb the window grill upside down. Look, Ma, no hands! Noisy too. They can set up such a cacophony of ear piercing cries, especially if a lazily curious Brahminy kite hovers too low over the gulmohars. I pretend that they’re all males though obviously not. I’ve seen a pair mating on the badam tree…
The kites are earnestly building their haphazard nests on the most unlikely branches. It’s entirely possible the egg might roll right out of the nest before it hatches. They look like teenage parents to me. All heat and passion and about to be shell shocked by the daily toil of bringing up a kid. The ever present garbage on the streets of Mumbai have transformed these kites from high soaring, thermal riding, sky diving raptors to scavenging, shady, leery eyed first floor tenants. They snack on the squirrels when no one is looking. Come to the city, they said. Come to the City of Dreams. And endless garbage.
The koels are full throated in their love making. Sometimes they seem more in love with the humidity than each other. They call throatily to the skies, that insistent call that means monsoon in so many languages. They are really gorgeous with their grey speckled tails and red eyes. I remember the documentary about the cuckoo chick physically pushing the eggs of the host bird out of the nest. Our koels are cousins to the Medicis of the bird world. Best they stay away from my balcony…we admire each other from a distance.
The pigeons and crows of our city have mutated scarily. I’m not sure they even produce eggs any more. Possibly just ruffle their feathers and out pops one more fully grown pest. Anyway, they aren’t welcome on my balcony. They are the only ones that make a mess of the water and then the other birds stay away. We are at war, the pigeons and I. The crows know they are not welcome, at least when I’m home. The pigeons though are those unwanted dim witted guests who never seem to catch on.
This is spring in my Mumbai. Despite the incessant sounds of drilling and heavy machinery of a city manically heading for ‘development’, and in memory of the many trees that were sacrificed in the last couple of years at the altar of the Metro, we still have this season of hope and renewal to enjoy once again.