The Singleton Nestling

We will never know what happened to the carcass of the other nestling as it emerged in the dim but clear photo, a tinier head wedged beneath its better formed and oh, slightly bigger sibling. My housekeeper had counted 3 eggs in the nest when she last peeped, but I had barely make out two alive newborns when I took this photo a few days later. Here, one could see bits of egg shells, remnants of cataclysmic births, when everything seemed possible and life was promising.

And then there was One. I next encountered the mother in the nest on a quiet afternoon, and puzzled by the mother’s persistent presence, crouched in the crowded nest, I ventured closer, and she abruptly flew away. My next blind photograph from above the nest revealed a full-throated but silent nestling, even as a couple of shrill chirps from the yellow-vented bulbul, perched on a nearby tree, signaled a call to lie low and be quiet and meek, while awaiting the departure of the intruder.

Over the next few days, I left the mother and nestling alone, lest my recurrent intrusions precipitated abandonment. When I next spied from afar, I found the mother bulbul sitting quietly in the nest. This was a new experience for me, the observer, as in the past, the bulbul nestlings would usually be occupied with each other in crowded conditions, and the parents would be bustling to and fro, hunting and feeding continuously.

The quiet pastoral scene that unfolded between mother and nestling gave me food for thought. By all intents, the mother was keeping the nestling company, through the loneliness of the evening, and day, to allay the anxiety of the young, and perhaps to fend off intruders. Such is the burden of altricial species i.e., those whose young is too weak to fend for themselves when born. Much more grub and preparation is needed before the fateful first flight. But there didn’t seem to be that harried hurry; that cacophony of choruses that marked a crowded nest.

In the meantime, the parents have found each other’s company, or rather, I have found the parents together, and beneath their watchful perch, the world below floats by, the trivialities of the humans and their intrusions cannot but confound, as the weighty business of survival and nurture reaches its crescendo.