WINGED VISITORS THAT GREET US DAILY

   

WINGED VISITORS THAT GREET US DAILY

  

The omnivore Indian house-crow (Corvus splendens or Corvidue) is one of the most intelligent birds with excellent eyesight and memory power. Even problem solvers, they make the best out of the worst. They build their nest with the minimum of simple tools. The meticulous ways crows do the ‘pick and choose’ of straws required for constructing their nest that come amaze me.

 

Everyone knows that even if a single crow were to sight some food item, by cawing it would invite its fellow-birds for dining together, a good virtue and trait; a moral lesson even to humans. For years, my family is lucky to enjoy the scene daily on the terrace of the house we are now living in. We daily feed the crows considered as our ‘forefathers’, as goes a religious belief. 

 

After every dawn it happens like this! Besides others, a particular crow with its slightly broken upper-beak would visit the terrace in the morning and caw for food. Once their food ‘kaaraa boondhi’ (crunchy and spherical spicy savoury snack) is ready (or sometimes wet ‘atta’ flour) in a plate with a porcelain vessel full of water kept nearby to quench thirst, it would send out calls to its friends to come and join.

 

Once used to a particular food item provided, they reject any other eatable(s), if offered by us. The territory-sensitive crows don’t seem to clamour for a more fertile area, better weather, or verdant expanses.

 

The brainy crows remember faces of people like pets do. Its response would be a little more receptive to my wife who is the regular feeder than me. Of course, I also do the job sometimes, never failing to enjoy crows enjoying their meal. They don’t get unduly scared at known persons. Accompanying us majestically dancing its way to the dining plate, they would eat as much as they like in the company of their friends around and flee, always leaving a balance of some pieces most of which would be roasted groundnuts/pulses to be enjoyed by a couple of visiting squirrels. Occasionally, sparrows used to come and eat the leftover. Sparrows hop around looking for their favourite seeds or grains. Outside, around food restaurants, sparrows seem the most ubiquitous, snatching up bits of dropped or thrown away food items and/or ploughing or plucking their way through garbage.

 

At least a hundred parrots live on the top of 6 coconut-trees in and around our house. Only a few would make a very rare visit to our terrace. Waking up around 6.00 A.M. - chirping and screeching - they would leave their nests and fly away in a flock to return home together invariably around 6.00 P.M. yelling to inform all “We’re back home”! And a couple of pigeons/doves also do visit us.

 

Crows are perfect hosts to their fellow-birds. Individually and collectively, they impart important lessons to humanity like hospitality, co-existence, mutual accommodation, grouping together on demanding occasions for concerted actions for common cause, application of mind, and alertness, among others! They are incredibly smart to escape impending dangers, intelligent adapters and sharp-minded. They rightly choose what can be safely eaten from the heaps of thrown-away and left-over foods. Crows play foster-parents to cuckoo chicks. They don’t migrate even temporarily and mostly confine themselves to a particular area which they are already familiar with. They help promote cleanliness by preying on the carcass of dead rats and other road kills, breeding on insects, etc.

         

A crow is a symbol of unity besides being a socialist and eliminator of impurities. They herald and greet the daily dawns with their croak and cry for the whole world to wake up and work. By imparting life lessons they burnish our intellectual knife.

 

We also have other visitors like butterflies, dragon-flies (‘Thumbi’ in Tamil), house-flies (‘ஈ’), mosquitoes, bees, etc. The cynosure butterflies are spirit-uplifters. The saying, “There can be no better designer than the Nature” is well proved if one were to look at the natural motley of colours and designs of sorts of butterflies which are unique and mind-blowing creatures of God indeed! One who loves nature is never alone!

 

R.SAMPATH

9/5/2020