Black Kite and the chicks Part 2

Starting off with a comment I got from Mr K Parthasarathi in Part One of the Black Kite. Nature abounds with beauty, if only we observe keenly to the minute details. One need not go to forests or sanctuaries for watching the birds as they reside around our houses also. It just calls for an abiding interest. Looking for the second video soon. I know this second part got delayed. The main reason was that I was busy with some other assignments. So here goes: The young ones were growing up pretty fast and the parents were getting more and more protective about them.

I could have got better shots of the nest from the terrace, but stopped venturing there as the parents were getting the wrong idea that I was a threat to the young ones.

The male and the female made regular sorties to feed the young ones.

While observing the kite I couldn't help notice some of the other birds that visited the tree. Like this Indian Golden Oriole.

The bee eater turns up early morning and they are my favourite

This female Koel was looking menacing

The coppersmith was always up there on the wire reciting her tuk tuk at regular intervals.

I have seen the common mynah but this one looked different and after looking it up in the Bird book, I realized that this is the Brahminy Mynah.

These fan tail birds keep flitting from branch to branch and are very fast, making it difficult to click them. What I like about them is their sweet long bird call (20:57)

The sunbird as usual was good with her acrobatic tricks.

I was lucky enough to spot a sparrow. Yes, the common sparrow is not so common nowadays.

The crow kept looking at me as if to say "why don't you click me?"

When you have time just observe the crows and see how smart they are. (R K Laxman's favorite past time was to sketch the crows) The parrot was not far from the nest and observed the activity

He finally decided to savour the seeds from the pods of the same tree

While filming all this, the sound of the birds chirping filled up my sound track. Reminded me of what I read somewhere....... if you want to hear the sound of the bird, don't buy a cage, plant a tree. Meanwhile the feeding went on and you can see that one of them is waiting for his turn to be fed

There was some unseasonal rains and that caught the parents off guard. I mean the nesting season is well before the monsoon so that the young ones fly off before the monsoon. But this storm was really lashing out threatening to dislodge the nest. The mother bird tried her best to protect the young ones under her wings. After the storm was over this is what I captured. (12:00)

The next day was bright and sunny. While observing the young ones I was wondering about some of the traits that the young ones pick up. Like house keeping. When the chicks want to relieve themselves, they will slowly walk backwards to the end of the nest, aim and shoot out of the nest, thereby keeping the nest clean. I don't think they were potty trained by the parents, so I presume it is an inherited behaviour. (9:46 and 17:22)

The young ones liked to explore the surroundings when the parents were not around.

Meanwhile there was romance brewing on the adjacent tree between two Coucals (Bharadwaj) The nest on that tree is an old crow’s nest.

Coming back to the Black Kite, I found that they were more anxious about the young ones

I even found one of them dozing off during the day time. (26:10)

There was a squirrel who liked the thrill of jumping from one tree to the next one.

As the days progressed I found that only one chick was active or rather only one head was popping up.

After waiting for one more day I took a risk and went and peeped from the terrace. My fears were confirmed as I found the chick lying listless in the nest. It was probably dead. The mother kite did not give up hope and kept nudging and goading the listless one. By evening she must have realised what has happened and she picked up the carcass from the nest and threw it in a thicket not far away from the tree. The action was partially caught by my camera (36:52) Notice how we call them a chick or “young one” but the moment they are dead we refer to them as carcass. The part where I mentioned earlier that the chick was caught dozing off, maybe he was not well and couldn’t hold his head straight. The sad part was that the next day the same thing happened with the second chick. I was wondering, what must have gone wrong that both the chicks died within twenty four hours of each other. Was it food poisoning? Or was it due to the unseasonal rains which made them fall sick. I was hoping to capture the whole life cycle and present it as a cheerful event to the already gloomy world, but it was not to be. Life does not go as planned. This was one of the reasons I was putting off writing the second part. I am leaving these last two pics here without any comments.

The video was shot a little at a time on a daily basis and put together without much editing. So it may be a little lengthy, more like a documentary of the nest.

The Bulbul and Mrs Koel

This is not the first time that the Red Vented Bulbul is making a nest on our terrace, but this time I got to see one of the natural habits of these avian species.

As usual the pair came scouting for a place to build the nest and within two days they decided on the location.  The work started in full earnest. The basic frame work was made and they never fail to get some sort of a thread to tie the nest to the base. (this time it was some white plastic thread)

As the days progressed, the nest took a firm shape with both the male and the female ones taking turns in getting the material for the nest.

When one came in, the other would leave for more twigs.

The items they got were just right for a nest. Dried flowers, cotton, broken broom sticks.

Once some unwanted material came along (I think it must have been chewing gum) and the Bulbul got rid of it, preened itself nicely on the fence and only then entered the nest.

Life was happy in the neighbourhood with the Robins hoping about and the Magpie looking for worms

Meanwhile danger loomed close by in the form of a Male Koel who was observing everything from a nearby tree.

The Koel must have informed Mrs Koel, as I found her lurking around well hidden in the foliage.

My observation was that she was hanging around more than Mr Koel. I suppose his work was to go scouting around for nests so that his female counterpart could lay her egg in those nests.

The only problem was that Mrs Koel had no idea if the Bulbul had already laid her eggs as the nest looked complete now.

So when the coast was clear, she made a dash for the nest and peeped inside. Even though my camera was on I could not capture that action.  Or rather I was awestruck by what this huge bird was trying to do and totally forgot to point the camera in the right direction.  All I got in my frame was her swooping down.

I don’t know if the Bulbul pair was aware of this action that took place as I saw them later giving their final touch to shape up the nest.

The next day, while I was working at my desktop I heard a big commotion outside. I could usually place a bird by its call, but this was a cacophony of many birds. I rushed out and found that a magpie, a mynah, two robins and two bulbuls were trying to attack something. The target was out of my sight (hidden by the foliage) but I guessed who it could be.

I got my camera and tried to capture the action. Mrs Koel was the target and probably she was a common enemy for all these birds.

Mrs Koel was outnumbered and knew that.  She went into the “broken wing” act, something that birds do, either to divert attention or for sympathy.  

From here she flew onto the swing with the bulbuls in close pursuit.

The bulbuls were not ready to give up and wanted her out of their territory. They made swooping sorties on her. Mrs Koel saw an opening in between these sorties and flew away.

I read some interesting facts about the female Koel on the net. One that caught my attention was written about seven decades ago by one Mr Krishna Raju on “Intelligence of a pair of Koels”

In fact that typewritten archive has a lot of info for bird lovers (click here to see)

Coming back to our Bulbul pair, the nest is ready, but will they come back to lay their eggs?  What do you say? I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Have made a 12 minute video on the complete action (or rather all that I could capture) All bird calls heard in this video is the ambient natural sound.