Bird Parenting |
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Nalinaksha Mutsuddi |
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This time around I had a unique opportunity of watching how birds raise their chicks. It's about ubiquitous pigeons found in almost all cities around religious places.
We had two hanging pots containing evergreen shrubs overlooking our drawing room windows. With my wife gone, nobody looks after them. The shrubs withered and dried up. The pots are empty. The pigeons found it as an ideal site for nesting. Two birds are there, supposedly one male, the other female. How the male bird knows when the other is going to lay eggs? They jointly selected the site. I don't know whether every other species of birds follow this norm. Both the partners were busy in building the nest. Building phase over the female laid eggs, engendering the next phase of hatching, shared again by both. They sit on the eggs turn by turn. After a few hours, one comes to relieve the other. It's a routine till the tiny chicks came out. Now the chicks are kept warm under the wings of parents. Probably for one or two days they don't need feeding. It's interesting to note how Nature devised the method of bringing food grains for the chicks. They store the grits/grains in the gizzard. The moment they come to the nest the chicks rise in alertness and insert their beaks in the beaks of the parent. The parent will shake the body to regurgitate the grains transferring to the chicks. It's a delight to see the grains put in the mouth of the chicks get transformed into wings and colourful plumes like 3D printing. The fledglings are tough to withstand the hot sun. Inbred hygienic sense makes them excrete outside the nest. Soon they grew up as full-fledged pigeons and flew away. The nest is empty. Parental responsibility is over.
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Comments on this Blog
Nalinaksha Mutsuddi 07/28/2020 21:45 PM
Rajender Chowdhry 07/28/2020 18:28 PM |
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