November/December 2015

From that moment I became a self-appointed crusader and protector of the birds Even as a child, I was fascinated by wild things. Some of my first memories are those of my dad marching me into the wilds of the jungle and pointing out troops of monkeys, kaleidoscopes of butterflies, and schools of fish. The flapping of wings intrigued me most. It didn’t matter if the wings were those of birds, bats, or dragonflies. Birds, however, were my favorite. I found it amazing that they were so free. Free to fly, to soar, to go wherever they wanted or yield to wherever the wind took them. These little fragile creatures made of hollow bones and feathers, although so free, could suddenly plummet back to earth and break into a million pieces. Hollow bones snapped, the ability to fly, the one thing that made them so free, snatched so easily. But still they rose bravely into the air. As if suspended by an invisible wire, they rose. They rose. I will never forget seeing the spotted wood owls in the driveway at school. I was four. And I was excited. My dad had told me about them several times before we actually went to see them. He had heard them hooting and seen them flying in the long driveway some evenings, but not all, around seven. That year the spotted wood owls had come back to nest in the broad rain trees lining the driveway and they had a chick. That evening I was allowed to stay up past my bedtime, an event memorable in itself though. I don’t actually remember the drive in the car to the owls, just the excitement. The excitement and the eyes. The big, black, bright eyes that were framed by the beautiful dark brown face. The three owls sat side by side together on the branch with the little, fluffy owlet nestled safely between them. The wind had a damp smell to it. It was a smell that hung on the breeze just as the owls’ deep and powerful hoot did. It echoed through the whistling leaves. Excited, I wiggled my toes in my shoes. The baby owl called shrilly for food and looked over, expectantly, at its mother and father, who both in turn returned their gaze. In the dark their eyes glowed with magic. From that moment I became a self-appointed crusader and protector of the birds, and my first battle was to stop other junior school students from touching the pink-necked green pigeons’ nest. My friends, Jasmin, Maya, and Avni, were also involved. Avni mostly tagged along when it suited, and Maya went along with anything. Jasmin, however, was my best friend and my equal partner when it came to our frequent adventures. Drama unfolded because other junior school students didn’t know not to touch nests, which surprised me, because my dad had always told me not to touch the nests. Lifting me up onto the tops of his shoulders to see the birds’ nests, high up, he’d say, “Don’t touch it,” firmly but softly. He has always had a funny way of being able to do that. Then he’d say, “You know why?” I would shake my head. “Because then the mummy and daddy bird will leave the baby and you don’t want that, do you?” And I’d shake my head again. It stunned me that other kids didn’t know not to touch the nest and that their parents had never told them. It wasn’t the kids I needed to worry about though. It was the cat. One break time, the cat pounced and snatched the egg from the nest. I blamed myself for that and I thought that I should have done more to stop the cat from eating one of the eggs. We took the remaining egg to the science lab to put in the incubator, thinking the parents had abandoned it because of the cat. Maybe they had, maybe they hadn’t; we took it upon ourselves to intervene. For the next three weeks the egg remained precariously balanced between two sticks of the tattered nest. The whitish-pink speckled egg was cool and just a little rough to the touch. I would visit that incubator every day. Before school. After school. And every single break. I’d open the door and stretch up on my tippy-toes to see the silver tray that housed the egg, nestled in the remains of the nest. But the egg never hatched. Sometimes my friends would come. No matter how much we hoped it would, the egg never hatched. So I would close the door. I could picture the little baby bird clearly in my mind. It flapped. And it cried. In my mind’s eye I saw its oversized head fitted with a pair of equally oversized eyes that had not yet opened the whole way. Over time, the chick would gain strength and size, its eyes opening, and the body of the chick growing in around the eyes, making the chick look less alien-like, its feathers shooting, swelling, and sprouting. In my imagination the baby bird was getting ready to fly away from its prison of metal and disinfectant. Then one day it did hatch. Well, it split really. The shell was smooth and breakable, cracked in several different directions. The slightly decomposed body of the chick was left exposed on the tray, the short stubs of feathers sprouting. The stubs that would one day have enabled it to fly free. All of the features were fully formed, ready to hatch. But it hadn’t. The eyes were closed. Never to open. Not to hold the beauty that the eyes of the owls had held. Despite my constant care and attention, the baby bird died and I blamed myself for this failure of the nest. Yet, this did not affect my interest in birdlife very much, it just made me more cautious and taught me not to become so attached to the often cruel