Welcome, readers! Please enjoy this regurgitated wildlife-article on my blog, more which are expected to appear soon . I have tried to keep it as informal as possible, to hold up the curiosity of the non-birder sect.
Purple-rumped Sunbirds (Leptocoma zeylonica, formerly Nectarinia zeylonica) are a mere 11 cm long, colorful, sickle-shaped billed nectar-feeding species. The female is dull earth on the back , pale on the belly, with a hint of lemon yellow on the breast. In contrast, the male has an iridescent green crown, a chatoyant purple rump, deep brown back, a dark neck, a pale belly, and a bright yellow breast.
Ok, enough of ornithological jargon, lets begin with the story. The location is my balcony, on the 2nd storey of the last wing of Hostel 3, IIT-Bombay, Mumbai.
This rather bold pair occupied the arboreal territory near my room since when I don't know, but one fine day (20 September 08) came along the female with a twig, clung to the hanging arm-loop of my roommate’s banian (left to dry on a nylon-line in the balcony), and entwined it about that. She had chosen this spot to be her nursery. I dint much notice of this then, but a flurry of activity followed, when the female laboriously collected thin tree bark and started gluing together a compact, pendulous nest with cobwebs. The interior was lined with wild silk-cotton for the comfort of the occupants. Her mate did show up occasionally, though I wouldn’t give him much credit for the beautiful nes
t that was ready for occupation on 25 September, all cozy with an entrance hole just big enough to allow the birds to get snug in.
The female from now stayed-put in the nest all-night. On 29 September, a single egg was laid (I know this as I used to peep into the nest-hole every day, when the owners weren’t around). Unfortunately, I wasn’t witness to the copulation, so can’t say when it took place.
Then commenced the incubation-sub-phase of the parenting-phase of the bird’s life. The female alone incubated, the male vanishing for that time from the vicinity, for unknown reasons. She stayed in the nest till late mornings, for short durations in the afternoon; full time evening and night.
As reward to her efforts, the chick hatched somewhere between 12 and 14 October. The chick was a blind and helpless dark colored mass when born; for some time the mother still acted as if incubating; this was to keep the chick warm, till it could regulate its own temperature.
In a couple of days, the chick was active, and as if miraculously aware of his fatherly responsibilities, the male returned on 18 October , and both parents started feeding the chick, on what I was unable to find out.
Soon, the chick also responded to my imitation(albeit very poor) of its parents’ voices, by opening its wide gaping beak as if begging for food. In the days that followed most of the feeding was done by the male, and the chick grew in size visibly.
Unfortunately, around this time, I had to leave for home in the Diwali vacations, so I could not observer the full fledgling of the chick, but when I returned 10 days later, the nest was deserted, and I dismantled it to reclaim the banian from the wild.
Now comes the really interesting part...
Normally birds raise only one brood a year, and rarely, when food and nesting-sites are available in plenty, will they raise another.
On the 12th of March 2009, barely 3 months later, the pair was back again twittering and jostling excitedly about my balcony. This time the nest was suspended from the nylon line itself, so at a higher altitude than before. Not to go through it all again, the nest completed (again, mainly by the female) in 5 days.
Unexplicably, the birds deserted the site for about a week or so, whence I was left contemplating, whether or not to clear the beautiful ball of twigs and cobwebs. But, the builders did return, the female staying there at night, and laid 2 eggs on the 20th of March. Since I was a bit busy during the that time, I did not observe the incubation. I was excited when I saw the pair of chicks about 8th April. Determined to photo-record the rearing of the chicks, I conjured up a rather uncanny contraption – a mirror on the other side of the balcony, facing the nest’s entrance, and a high pile of books and boxes as a support for my camera, whose lens protruded out of the curtain through a tiny hole in it. This was done so that I could get good photos of the family without them knowing of a human presence. The chicks grew fast as the parents kept bringing morsels of Insecta(bugs) and Arachnida(spiders), at intervals ranging from 10 minutes to an hour. The chicks, now able to see the world (from a high vantage point) around them, feathering , kept calling throughout late mornings and afternoons (this somewhat disturbed me when I wanted to concentrate on a book). One of them, the elder one, displayed dominant behavior, trying to grab most of what the parents brought as feed. The sanitation was also well-planned; the lump of defecate was passed directly to the parent’s bill, from the cloacal opening, by an ungainly up-ending of the chick in the nest.
The parents behaved strangely after 18 April, the male clung to the nest without paying any attention to the chicks, the female displayed vociferously in the balcony and the tree opposite, also another couple of adult sunbirds (of the same species) was seen nearby. I was at loss to comprehend the meaning of this conundrum. But things settled down after that. The chicks now were becoming restless and enthusiastic to exploreI the world around. Alas, I had to leave my room again for a few days. And when I returned on 28 April, the juveniles had left their home, out into the cruel world on their own. I can only hope for the safety of the chicks, whom I had so enjoyed watching grow up.
P.S. : I have tried my best not to interfere with or disturb the nesting-activity of the birds during the observation.
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