The Hindu Business Line : Spreading cheer this season

May is the kindest month of the year. Days are long. From anywhere in Mumbai one can watch a sunrise and sunset. Every working human in Mumbai dreams of going on a vacation and most times the bosses reject requests for leave. None can stop the corporate bosses from skinning their Swiss accounts to fund siestas in Europe and America (or is it China?). Honking school buses do not pull out kids from their beds. There is a sense of pleasant cheer.

The first bird to come alive in the morning quiet is the screaming kuoo-kuoo-kuoo calls of the koel, followed by the breathless chirp of the magpie robin. The red-vented bulbuls, crows and sparrows make up the common crowd and there is nothing left of the early morning when one sets out to walk the empty streets with a binocular on hand. By 6 a.m. the throughways are busy with human beings of every age adding to one's bounce.

In the last week, the talk was all about a speeding vehicle throwing two early walkers into a ditch bordering the road and killing one old man. The Linking Road has now been well laid, linking Bandra to Dahisar for cars and mobikes to whiz past in unnatural haste. The yellow flowers of the copper pod mix well with the red blooms of the red silk cotton and gulmohar; the quietly mannered Pride of India, the pagoda tree, temple tree and the blue jacaranda add to the airy frolic.

In May, it is easy to identify trees by their flowers and it helps if one takes the trouble to have on hand The Trees of Bombay for identification. For long, one has been searching for the homes of squirrels but has not gone beyond the chik-chik of the squirrels with tails flicking. Over the last four years, one paid little attention to the heronry atop a tamarind tree at the road junction leading to Jayaraj Nagar. The cattle egrets and pond herons fly in by the second week of April and fly out with the rains.

The tamarind tree may not be more than 50 years old and has a wide headgear for the cattle egrets and pond herons to build their nests and start a new generation. The open space on which the tree stands is more of a public urinal and in a manner keeps away the public for the birds to live in peace. Every day, one has been spending about 20 minutes watching the birds with one's binocular as they get busy building their nests.

At home, one refers to The Book of Indian Birds by Dr Salim Ali to get a perspective. "The orange-buff head, neck and back of the breeding plumage render it unmistakable. ... The nest is an untidy twig platform like a crow's. In mixed colonies with cormorants, paddy birds, etc. in large leafy trees, not necessarily near water and often in the midst of a noisy town," notes Dr Salim Ali of cattle egrets and that's precisely the situation on the tamarind tree.

Why do cattle egrets prefer the city? One of the many queries having no answers. Sometimes, the cattle egrets try to break the thin branches, failing which, they fly down searching for fallen twigs. One has not been able to separate the male from the female though one witnessed a pair mating in the morning; apparently, the male cattle egret is smaller than the female bird.

On the far side of the tree (away from the road), a few pond herons have staked their claim and this morning, one gazed at three chicks struggling their way out of the nest to be near their mother, who was hovering around. Cattle egrets sometimes emit a churrrr... while the pond herons seem to be a silent lot. A few crows hang around in the hope of getting at their eggs, while the egrets and herons shoo them off.

By about 10 in the morning, one can see the adult cattle egrets and pond herons settling near the creek in search of food. Till date, no builder has eyed the piece of land on which the tamarind tree stands but it is sure to go with contractors busy building towers in Borivili for sale at around Rs 5,000 per sq. ft. Over the last two years, many trees have been cut down to widen roads, while in the LIC Colony area old bungalows are being pulled down for apartments. It is some sort of a frightful orgy.

One fondly read an essay by Romila Thapar in a collection styled, Environmental Issues in India: A reader, edited by Mahesh Rangarajan. She writes: "Emperor Ashoka took pride in the roads which were constructed by his administration and these he states were lined with shade-giving trees and wells. The building of the baolis at intervals along the major roads characterises road construction at many points in history. These were mainly small structures with wells, often set in a garden. The more elaborate ones elsewhere were virtually underground places and a thick growth of trees in the vicinity added to keeping the place cool."

Our highway engineers today may not have read Emperor Ashoka; that may not be in the syllabus. Perhaps, travellers in air-conditioned cars and buses carry water bottles with them and do not much need trees or wells.

Last Sunday, one was lucky to spot a Paradise Flycatcher inside the housing society. For a few seconds, one froze watching the bird with its white tail streamers flying in the air, landing on a mango tree inside the society and taking off as quickly. Then two days ago, while walking back home one heard the call of a white-breasted kingfisher. Firmly perched on an overhead wire some 100 ft above the road, it was in the mood to trill. For five minutes it stayed put on the wire as one scanned it with the binocular. Could one ask for more?

P. Devarajan

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Spreading cheer this season