Let me tell you something before I begin my story. I have a fairly bad bruise on my forehead. My cameraman was curious to know what caused it. You too might share his suspicion that I got beaten up. But that’s not true. The other day, after reading newspaper reports, I took a fancy towards antiques, bought a traditional hanging lamp made of bell metal, and hung it in the front of my house. The next day, partly because I forgot about it and partly because of my typical carelessness, I got bruised at a couple of spots – forehead and top of the head – as I went in and out of the house. Now to the point.
While studying in college, I was a member of the Shastra Sahitya Parishad [Kerala Science Literature Movement] which used to conduct campaigns annually for students, suggesting ways to spend their vacations. My job was to give instructions to the students. Once, it was about making bird baths. Usually I experimented things for myself before I took on the job of giving instructions. So I put up a bird bath in my own garden plot by fixing a discarded earthen wok on a drumstick tree. I drew water from the well in the morning and filled the wok. For the first couple of days, birds did not come. Later, they began to appear in order to drink and also to bathe. I had to fill the vessel with water twice every day. That summer vacation passed by pleasantly. The next year, I left Kerala for higher studies, and then I became too busy to do such things.
Sometime back, the well-known lepidopterist, ornithologist and Nature-lover Suresh Elamon made a film which we marketed. The theme was the world of Nature around our homes, and he spoke about setting up a Bird Desk in gardens where birds can have food. When I made a forest, I remembered what he said. But the chief obstacle was a cat that hid itself in order to make an ambush attack on the birds that flew onto the desk that we had arranged on the terrace of our house. The birds, sighting it from above, stopped coming.
Therefore, after constructing this house, we changed the arrangement. We took a short piece of PVC pipe, cut it length-wise, fixed caps at both ends, and suspended it with the help of chains or coir ropes. Their constant movement, we knew, would keep cats away. In a couple of days, birds began to arrive. So we made more of these structures, and tried out a few different models. If you do this, please remember to bore a couple of holes in the pipes so that, during the rains, water does not collect in them and ruin the food we store in them. I tried varying the food I supplied, and found that fruits did not attract many birds. The material that attracted birds the most was crumbs of Modern bread.
Once I happened to watch a documentary about Wayanad. It featured a long-haired man doing shooting practice with bow and arrows. More attractive was the number of birds that went to him – virtually hundreds of them. I learnt two lessons from the video. One, he added bakery-made cupcakes along with bread crumbs, maybe to make the food sweeter or to attract birds and squirrels. So I followed that practice. Two, he placed them on a tray or plank. That was when I realized that birds were afraid of landing on my rocking food tube. Besides, it was difficult for more than one bird to sit on it at a time. So if you have a similar interest, consider putting up planks because more numbers of birds can be accommodated on them. Ensure that cats cannot access them. Here, we give birds not only bread crumbs but water as well. It is summer time and birds require water.
An interesting point I recall is the practice of Sunitha, one of my friends who happens to live in a flat above my daughter’s. Every month, she purchases packets of crispy mixture from a bakery, and entrusts it with the security guard. Every morning, as he has his morning tea, he leaves a small portion of mixture out in the open. A mynah that has a nest in a coconut tree nearby flies down, walks along with the security guard along the reception corridor, and eats the mixture before taking off to the air. That is a real sight to watch!
There is no point in raising birds in cages. If we supply food regularly and when they feel assured that we won’t hurt them, they will come to us in hordes. At first, on seeing these bamboo structures, the birds feared that they were traps. They kept distance, came hesitantly and pecked. It was quite a while before they started coming regularly. So if we place water and food in such a way as to win their trust, they will come in large numbers from everywhere. If you pour water into bigger vessels, that will be convenient for the birds to take bath in. But we should be careful about changing the water regularly so that they don’t catch any infection due to our negligence. All we need to do is set apart 15 minutes daily for this exercise. And we should arrange the bird desk and bird bath at spots where we can see them. That will be real fun to watch. Right now, I can hear the calls and chirps of a lot of birds. Perhaps they are in anticipation of the food that is going to be served here.