A fledgeling with a kill

An intriguing upside of being a slowpoke-on-a-walkabout birder (and bird photographer) is how you discover and rediscover the sentience of the world around you -- starting (of course) with a deeper understanding of the lives and living of the common birds around, and then evolving to a level when you are aware of the wildflowers your tread may crush, or the hundreds of toad hatchlings that literally spring out of the rain-soaked, unpaved earth in front of you even as you walk amidst them, as if they were clods of soil, or...


The downside is that you see every bird you encounter as a character, and every story that you want to tell is weighed down with its backstory.

So, first let's get the backstory out of the way.

For almost a month, I have not been able to go birding in my usual carefree and footloose way because a mother Shikra wouldn't allow me in "her" territory, beating me back by the simplest expedient in a raptor's repertoire -- dive-bombing me.

The first two times this happened, it was dusk and I was besides a well (that I have written about here earlier) and waiting up for a pair of breeding White-throated Kingfishers.

While I knew where the Shikra's nest was, I wasn't too keen on taking photographs of a nest or nestlings and the wildly-in-ferment foliage of the Eucalyptus in whose heights the nest was did not allow it either.

Hence, I certainly had NO design on the nest or its contents.

But obviously this was not known to the Shikra, so I beat hasty retreat, badly shaken and congratulating myself for not having toppled into the empty depths of the well.

However, a part of my faculties also optimistically concluded that probably the bird was going for the well to get a drink of water and I just happened to be in the way. So, the next day, in the considerable heat of the afternoon, I was at Ground Zero again, but this time, the well was between me and the Shikra's nest. My objective of the day was to spend some time photographing the Baya weaver birds busily building their nests in a tree that grows out of the side of the well.

I did that and then moved on, going walkabout in search of other birds and keeping very clear of the Shikra's nest. That evening, when I was returning and by the tree again, flying out of the gloom and barely seen till the last nanosecond, the bird again came for me.

That was the third dive-bomb.

I decided to see if it was another "stray" attack and held my ground -- which, as a Shikra flies, was easily 80-100 metres from the nest -- but then the bird came at me again. And again. So, I bet another hasty retreat...and on the long walk home, concluded that the bird is present (and in an attacking mode) at dusk...and the afternoons are safe for me to wait up for the White-throated Kingfishers and take some good photographs of the Baya Weavers.

This conclusion meant that I was at the well the next day, after another long, sweat-soaked and bruising walk...and totally out in the open, to first peer down into it -- and on not finding anything happening there -- peering up at the Weaver Birds.

Yes, I was stupid enough to take my eyes off the "enemy's position", the Eucalyptus was on my blind side and almost behind me. While I was wiping the sweat off my brows and taking another breath, preparatory to lifting the lens up to make some more photographs of the Baya weavers, all of them just blew out of the tree, in a manic commotion, as if borne on a gale.

Some bird-like instinct that I have acquired of late made me turn my head in time to spot my nemesis arrowing straight at me.

I ducked, flailed my lens arm and I screamed...I don't really remember what it was.

Before I could get out of there, the bird dive-bombed me one more time.

Naturally, by now -- in just a matter of 3 days -- the Shikra had made it clear that it was her territory and that I was clearly an interloper whose presence wouldn't be tolerated.

So, I stayed at home.

Or went out to the Buffalo Wallow...involuntarily ducking at the sight of a solitary dove or a pair of Mynahs flying above my head.

A week passed. Or was it a fortnight?

One fine afternoon, when I was again in the general surroundings (and easily some 200 metres from the Eucalyptus), a shadow deliberately moved up through its foliage, to then perch itself very visibly on a dead branch.

It was the mother Shikra, limned in the light and showing itself clearly in order to dissuade me from getting any closer.

So I walked away, glancing over my back all the while.

The day after, on another fine (or not so fine) afternoon, there was no "see-I-am-here" warning...she just came at me. And, as she pulled away from the dive, I saw a flicker in her eye that made me think, "Man, she seems to be enjoying this!"

This attack (and one more that followed) was a bit unprecedented, even by the standards of this fierce mother. So, I went away, to quietly return back, ducking from tree shadow to tree shadow, and then sitting on my haunches in the depths of a Lantana bush, I glassed the Eucalyptus, using the lens as a telescope.

This story (in all probability) starts here.

So, what do I see?

There is a bird as big as the fierce one, with spottings all over the breast and chest, stripes across its throat and a lot of yellow on its face. Hello there, Shikra fledgling -- I mouthed to myself, grinning from ear to ear. That was a little over a week ago.

A little after, I cycled over (without the lens) to do a recce -- to see if I get attacked, if you will -- and found (while maintaining my distance and using my bare eyes) that there were three shadows in that tree.

One Shikra mother and two fledglings? Or, three fledgelings?

The day before yesterday, staying at a fair distance, observing through the lens, I saw a fledgling having a go at the Baya Weavers...and landing up all at ends in a thicket of Ber.

Yesterday, half expecting the fierce one to dive at me once again, I made it close to the Eucalyptus, to see two of the fledglings sitting in its swaying branches and looking for all the world, as lost as kittens who have strayed up a tree.

Then, the idyll was shattered as the fierce one arrived, with a kill.

Before I knew what happened (and while I stayed in the shadows) the mother seemed to have passed on the kill to a fledgling and gone...

Or maybe it was the fledgeling itself which got the kill. I am thin on detail, I really don't know...one's visibility -- looking up into tree canopies isn't very good, even when one is in less extenuating positions

The photograph here is a Shikra fledgeling with a Scaly-breasted Munia kill.

And yes, the Mother Shikra allowed this photograph to be taken.