The World Outside My Window Page 5

  Spotted owlets are small birds.  A fully grown one is no larger than a thrush and they have none of the sinister appearance of large owls. I had once found a pair of them in our mango tree and by tapping on the tree trunk had persuaded one to show an enquiring face at the entrance to its hole. The owlet is not normally afraid of man, nor is it strictly a night bird. But it prefers to stay at home during the day, as it is sometimes attacked by other birds who consider all owls their enemies.

  The little owlet was quite happy under my bed. The following day we found a second baby owlet in almost the same spot on the veranda and only then did we realize that where the rainwater pipe emerged through the roof, there was a rough sort of nest from which the birds had fallen. We took the second young owl to join the first and fed them both.

  When I went to bed, they were on the window ledge just inside the mosquito netting and later in the night, their mother found them there. From outside, she crooned and gurgled for a long time and in the morning, I found she had left a mouse with its tail tucked through the netting. Obviously she put no great trust in me as a foster parent.

  The young birds thrived and ten days later, Grandfather and I took them into the garden to release them. I had placed one on a branch of the mango tree and was stooping to pick up the other when I received a heavy blow on the head. A second or two later, the mother owl swooped down on Grandfather, but he was quite agile and ducked out of the way.

  Quickly, I placed the second owl under the mango tree. Then from a safe distance we watched the mother fly down and lead her offspring into the long grass at the edge of the garden. We thought she would take her family away from our rather strange household, but the next morning I found the two owlets perched on the hatstand in the veranda.

  I ran to tell Grandfather and when we came back, we found the mother sitting on the birdbath a few metres away. She was evidently feeling sorry for her behaviour the previous day because she greeted us with a soft ‘whoo-whoo’.

  ‘Now there’s an unselfish mother for you,’ said Grandfather. ‘It’s obvious she wants us to keep an eye on them. They’re probably getting too big for her to manage.’

  So the owlets became regular members of our household and were among the few pets that Grandmother took a liking to. She objected to all snakes, most monkeys and some crows—we’d had all these pets from time to time—but she took quite a fancy to the owlets and frequently fed them spaghetti!

  They loved to sit and splash in a shallow dish provided by Grandmother. They enjoyed it even more if cold water was poured over them from a jug while they were in the bath. They would get thoroughly wet, jump out and perch on a towel rack, shake themselves and return for a second splash and sometimes a third. During the day they dozed on a hatstand. After dark, they had the freedom of the house and their nightly occupation was catching beetles, the kitchen quarters being a happy hunting ground. With razor-sharp eyes and powerful beaks, they were excellent pest-destroyers.

  Looking back on those childhood days, I carry in my mind a picture of Grandmother in her rocking chair with a contented owlet sprawled across her aproned lap. Once, on entering a room while she was taking an afternoon nap, I saw one of the owlets had crawled up her pillow till its head was snuggled under her ear. Both Grandmother and the owlet were snoring.

  Birds of the Night

  Having for a number of years suffered from rather poor vision, I am not the most eagle-eyed of birdwatchers. But, like many who don’t see too well, I have good powers of hearing, awakening in the night at the squeak of a mouse or the fluttering of a moth against the window pane. And when, at times, sleep is elusive, I can lie awake and derive pleasure from the sounds and calls of those birds who live largely by night.

  Not that all bird-calls are pleasing to the ear. The hawk-cuckoo semitones until one begins to think that the performer must surely burst. But the brainfever bird never bursts. Its cry is repeated for hours at a stretch.

  He is a hot-weather bird who haunts the groves and gardens in almost all parts of the country, his range extending from the Himalayan foothills to Cape Comorin. Only Assam and Punjab appear to be free from the attentions of this cuckoo.

  Another cuckoo, the common Indian cuckoo, has quite a pleasant note, which may be rendered by the words ‘wherefore, wherefore’, with quite a musical cadence. It begins to call about two hours before sunset, and continues through the night until the morning hours. It is usually silent during the middle of the day, when presumably it rests its vocal chords.

  There is a third night-loving cuckoo, the koel, who, like the brainfever bird, is not very popular with those who must try to sleep within hearing distance. His ‘ku-oo’ grows more strident with each successive rise in scale until sleep becomes almost impossible for anyone in the vicinity. Cunningham described it as a ‘highly pitched, trisyllabic cry, repeated many times in ascending’ as, Douglas Dewar wrote, ‘the jaded dweller in the plains, uttering strange oaths, rushes for his gun and seeks out the disturber of his slumber.’ But the clamour breaks off abruptly, and the sleeper returns to bed, rejoicing in the thought that the wretched bird has choked itself. And it is just then that the bird begins all over again!

  Nightjars are not much to look at, although their large, lustrous eyes gleam uncannily in the light of a lamp. But their sounds are distinctive. The breeding call of the Indian nightjar resembles the sound of a stone skimming over the surface of a frozen pond; it can be heard for a considerable distance. Douglas Dewar described the call of the Indian nightjar memorably as ‘the sound made by a stone skimming over ice’. Another species utters a loud grating call which, when close at hand, sounds exactly like a whiplash cutting the air. ‘Horsfield’s nightjar’ makes a noise similar to that made by striking a plank with a hammer.

  During the day the bird spends long hours sitting motionless on the ground, where it is practically invisible, only springing into life when an intruder approaches. It is also called the ‘goatsucker’ because of its huge mouth and the legend spread in many countries that it feeds from the udders of cows and goats. Because of this erroneous belief, it is considered a bird of ill omen. Night-flying insects, such as moths and beetles, are its preferred meals.

  We mustn’t forget the owls, those most celebrated of night birds, much maligned by poets obsessed with death and cemeteries.

  Actually the owls have the pleasantest of calls. The little jungle owlet has a note that is both mellow and musical. Then there is the little scops owl, who speaks only in monosyllables, except for an occasional ‘wow’.

  Probably the most familiar of Indian owls is the spotted owlet. He is really a noisy bird, who pours forth a volley of chuckles and squeaks and chatters in the early evening and at intervals throughout the night. In the daytime, like other owls, the spotted owlet is silent, and hides away in some dark corner, such as a hole in a tree or a wall, emerging towards sunset to hunt a prey—chiefly insects, but also occasionally mice, shrews and lizards.

  Towards sunset, I watch the owlets emerge from their holes one after another. Before coming out, each puts out a queer little round head with staring eyes. After they have emerged they usually sit very quietly for a time, as though only half-awake. Then, all of a sudden, they begin to chuckle, finally breaking out in a torrent of chattering. Having in this way ‘psyched’ themselves into the right frame of mind, they spread their short, rounded wings and sail off for the night’s hunting.

  Birdsong in the Mountains

  Birdwatching is more difficult in the hills than in the plains. It is hard to spot many birds against the dark trees of the varying shades of the hillside.

  There are few birds who remain silent for long, however, and one learns of their presence from their calls or songs. Birdsong is with you wherever you go in the Himalayas, from the foothills to the treeline; and it is often easier to recognize a bird from its voice than from its colourful but brief appearance.

  The barbet is one of those birds which are heard more often than they are se
en. It has a monotonous far-reaching call, ‘pee-oh, pee-oh’, which carries for about a mile. Like politicians, these birds love listening to their own voices, and often two or three will answer each other from different trees, each trying to outdo the rest in a shrill shouting match. Some people like the barbet’s call and consider it both striking and pleasant. Some just find it striking.

  Hodgson’s grey-headed flycatcher-warbler is a long name that ornithologists, in their infinite wisdom, have given to a very small bird. This tiny warbler is heard, if not seen, more often than any other bird throughout the western Himalayas. Its voice is heard in every second tree, and yet there are few who can say what it looks like. Its song (if you can call it that), is not very tuneful and puts me in mind of the notice that sometimes appeared in salons out West: ‘The audience is requested not to throw things at the pianist. He is doing his best.’

  Our little warbler does its best, incessantly emitting four or five unmusical, but nevertheless joyful and penetrating, notes.

  Another tiny bird heard more often than it is seen is the green-backed tit, a smart little fellow about the size of a sparrow. It utters a sharp, rather metallic, but not unpleasant call which sounds like ‘kiss me, kiss me, kiss me’.

  A real songster is the grey-winged ouzel, found here in the Garhwal hills. Throughout the early summer it makes the wooded hillsides ring with a melody that Nelson Eddy would have been proud of. Joining in sometimes with a sweet song of its own, is the green pigeon. As though to mock their arias, the laughing-thrushes, who are exponents of heavy rock, give vent to some weird calls of their own.

  When I first came to live in the hills, it was the song of the Himalayan whistling thrush that first caught my attention. I was sitting at my window, gazing out at the new leaves on the walnut tree. All was still; the wind was at peace with itself, the mountains brooded massively under a darkening sky. Then, emerging like a sweet secret from the depths of a deep ravine, came this indescribably beautiful call.

  It is a song that never fails to enchant me. The bird starts with a hesitant whistle, as though trying out the tune; then, once confident of the melody, it bursts into full song, a crescendo of sweet notes and variations ringing clearly across the hillside. Suddenly the song breaks off, right in the middle of a cadenza, and I am left wondering what happened to make the bird stop. Nothing really, because the song is taken up again a few moments later.

  One day I saw the whistling thrush perched on the broken garden fence. He was a deep, glistening purple, his shoulders flecked with white. He has sturdy black legs and a strong yellow beak; a dapper fellow who would have looked just right in a top hat. As time passed, he ‘grew accustomed to my face’ and became a regular visitor to the garden. On sultry summer afternoons I would find him flapping about in the water tank. Later, refreshed and sunning himself on the roof, he would treat me to a little concert before flying off to his shady ravine.

  It was a boy from the next village who acquainted me with the legend of the whistling thrush. According to the story, the young god Krishna fell asleep near a stream, and while he slept a small boy made off with Krishna’s famous flute. Upon waking and finding his flute gone, Krishna was so angry that he changed the culprit into a bird. But having once played the flute, the boy had learnt bits and pieces of the god’s enchanting music. And so he continued, in his disrespectful way, to play the music of the gods, only stopping now and then (as the whistling thrush does) when he couldn’t remember the tune.

  It wasn’t long before my whistling thrush was joined by a female. Sometimes they gave solo performances, sometimes they sang duets; and these latter notes, no doubt, were love calls, because it wasn’t long before the pair were making forays into the rocky ledges of the ravine, looking for a suitable nesting site.

  The birds were liveliest in midsummer; but even in the depths of winter, with snow lying on the ground, they would suddenly start singing, as they flitted from pine to oak to naked chestnut.

  The wild cherry tree, which grows just outside my bedroom window, attracts a great many small birds, both when it is in flower and when it is in fruit.

  When it is covered with small pink blossoms, the most common visitor is a little yellow-backed sunbird, who emits a squeaky little song as she flits from branch to branch. She extracts the nectar from the blossoms with her long tubular tongue.

  Amongst other visitors are the flycatchers, gorgeous birds, especially the paradise flycatcher with its long white tail and ghost-like flight. Basically an insect eater, it likes fruits for dessert, and will visit the tree when the cherries are ripening. While moving along the boughs of the tree, they utter twittering notes, with occasional louder calls, and now and then the male breaks into a sweet little song, thus justifying the name shah bulbul (king of the nightingales), by which he is known in northern India.

  Guests Who Fly in from the Forest

  When mist fills the Himalayan valleys, and heavy monsoon rain sweeps across the hills, it is natural for wild creatures to seek shelter. Any shelter is welcome in a storm—and sometimes my cottage in the forest is the most convenient refuge.

  There is no doubt that I make things easier for all concerned by leaving most of my windows open—I am one of those peculiar people who like to have plenty of fresh air indoors—and if a few birds, beasts and insects come in too, they’re welcome, provided they don’t make too much of a nuisance of themselves.

  I must confess that I did not lose patience with a bamboo beetle who blundered in the other night and fell into the water jug. I rescued him and pushed him out of the window. A few seconds later he came whirring in again, and with unerring accuracy, landed with a plop in the same jug. I fished him out once more and offered him the freedom of the night. But attracted no doubt by the light and warmth of my small sitting room, he came buzzing back, circling the room like a helicopter looking for a good place to land. Quickly I covered the water jug. He landed in a bowl of wild dahlias, and I allowed him to remain there, comfortably curled up in the hollow of a flower.

  Sometimes, during the day, a bird visits me—a deep purple whistling thrush, hopping about on long dainty legs, peering to right and left, too nervous to sing. She perches on the windowsill, looking out at the rain. She does not permit any familiarity. But if I sit quietly in my chair, she will sit quietly on her windowsill, glancing quickly at me now and then just to make sure that I’m keeping my distance. When the rain stops, she glides away, and it is only then, confident in her freedom, that she bursts into full-throated song, her broken but haunting melody echoing down the ravine.

  A squirrel comes sometimes, when his home in the oak tree gets waterlogged. Apparently he is a bachelor; anyway, he lives alone. He knows me well, this squirrel, and is bold enough to climb on to the dining table looking for tidbits which he always finds, because I leave them there deliberately. Had I met him when he was a youngster, he would have learned to eat from my hand; but I have only been here for a few months. I like it this way. I am not looking for pets: these are simply guests.

  Last week, as I was sitting down at my desk to write a long-deferred article, I was startled to see an emerald-green praying mantis sitting on my writing pad. He peered up at me with his protuberant glass-bead eyes, and I started down at him through my reading glasses. When I gave him a prod, he moved off in a leisurely way. Later I found him examining the binding of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; perhaps he had found a succulent bookworm. He disappeared for a couple of days, and then I found him on the dressing table, preening himself before the mirror. Perhaps I am doing him an injustice in assuming that he was preening. Maybe he thought he’d met another mantis and was simply trying to make contact. Anyway, he seemed fascinated by his reflection.

  Out in the garden, I spotted another mantis, perched on the jasmine bush. Its arms were raised like a boxer’s. Perhaps they’re a pair, I thought, and went indoors and fetched my mantis and placed him on the jasmine bush, opposite his fellow insect. He did not like what he saw—no comparis
on with his own image!—and made off in a huff.

  My most interesting visitor comes at night, when the lights are still burning—a tiny bat who prefers to fly in at the door, should it be open, and will use the window only if there’s no alternative. His object in entering the house is to snap up the moths that cluster around the lamps.

  All the bats I’ve seen fly fairly high, keeping near the ceiling as far as possible, and only descending to ear level (my ear level) when they must; but this particular bat flies in low, like a dive bomber, and does acrobatics amongst the furniture, zooming in and out of chair legs and under tables. Once, while careening about the room in this fashion, he passed straight between my legs. Has his radar gone wrong, I wondered, or is he just plain crazy?

  I went to my shelves of Natural History and looked up bats, but could find no explanation for this erratic behaviour.

  The Whistling Schoolboy

  From the gorge above Gangotri

  Down to Kochi by the sea,

  The whistling thrush keeps singing

  His constant melody.

  He was a whistling schoolboy once,

  Who heard Lord Krishna’s flute,

  And tried to play the same sweet tune,

  But struck a faulty note.

  Said Krishna to the erring youth:

  A bird you must become,

  And you shall whistle all your days,

  Until your song is done.

  Section 3

  The Loveliness of Ferns

  The Coconut Tree

  The beginnings of most cultivated plants are a mystery, and few have received as much attention from scientists and botanists as the familiar coconut palm.

  Though it cannot be proved that the coconut first originated in India, there is no doubt that this tree has been with us since earliest times. Mention is made of it in several of the Puranas, which are the oldest books after the Vedas. There is also mention of it in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as in ancient Tamil literature. In some Hindu ceremonies, worship is offered to Varuna, the god presiding over the water and the oceans. This god is represented by a pot of water with a coconut placed at the mouth. The offering of an unbroken coconut to the sea probably comes from the idea that the coconut came from the seas. And there is a Ceylonese legend that says that it was brought to India from Nagaloka, a blissful region beyond the seas.