Pigeons

We often see countless pigeons around, near fountains in the city, enjoying the water, sitting pretty on air conditioners of an apartment, on window sills, old houses, and just anywhere. They seem to love humans; we rarely see pigeons nesting on trees like many birds.

Here in my city Mumbai there are places where people feed them and you will see only these plump birds feeding all day long, tirelessly. I have never seen other birds join them; it is only this species; not sparrows, bulbuls, crows, or other species who generally do love grains.

I wonder why people find it so amusing to feed them making them lousier as they truly are. Some despise these birds because of the annoying vocal chords perhaps, the sound seems to irritate people, and however, the innocent birds hardly realize how people also despise them.

Has anyone noticed that this species is often quarrelling, holding each other by beaks, twisting and turning, flapping wings hard to slap each other? We have spacious windows and have planted some plants, and these birds often land there on the pots just to have a terrible fight. They hardly notice when I poke a big stick or a ruler to shoo them away. When they do see something hitting or slapping them they are so terrified. They struggle to escape through the bars of the window, squeezing their flabby bodies flying onto another apartment to continue their fight. God alone knows what they quarrel for?

Quite a while ago, the pigeons struggled hard to bring in some long twigs, placed them in the pots and even before a nest was ready they laid eggs into it. OH! How could they be so silly compared to other birds, because the very moment some nasty greedy crows landed up and picked up the fresh meal and feasted over it. I pitied the female once when she had laid eggs and one of her egg was snatched away; my daughter placed a small white table tennis ball in the pot near the remaining egg so the female would feel her eggs are there.

Would you believe! This female and male both were easily fooled by this trick. They thought the table tennis ball was their egg after all and sat upon it, the ball was light so it would slip away, the bird pushed it by its beak to place it beneath its feathers. We have sliding glass panes; so it was a very hilarious sight to see how this innocent bird got fooled.

We had a good time laughing over it. Imagine a pigeon hatching a table tennis ball along with a real egg ! ! !

But it was placed with the intention that the couple would not feel sad about their lost egg eaten by the crow. There is more to the pigeon tale, will write more in my next post.