Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Saving for later: A fiery Flying Roule

Via Ron Silliman, found this tumblr. Sving here for later. And also sharing, I guess.

In the meantime, am feeling off-kilter.

There's always a bulbul nest in this season. The bulbuls change, but they always make their nest on the blue wind chime in the verandah. A couple of weeks ago, the chicks hatched and every day we could see the bright, pinky-red beaks poking out and chirping. They ate their greedy guts out and a few days ago, all the red vanished and was replaced by a dark grey brown.

Last night it was pissing down and later, around 2am, a strong wind began. It didn't occur to me to worry about the nest because it's a fairly sheltered place. But this morning, we found one chick down and two other perched precariously in a nest that the winds had tilted.

The mother continued to feed the two chicks in the nest. But the one on the ground...I don't know. She's been hopping by to take a look but it's not clear that she's feeding it. We left some worms near it but we have never seen worms stage a quicker getaway. Who knew worms could move that fast?

So the chick is shivering and taking tiny hops around, but we're not sure what to do.


3 comments:

km said...

The mother continued to feed the two chicks in the nest. But the one on the ground...I don't know.

So...two birds in the bush are worth one on the ground?

/OK, that was cruel. I hope Baby Bulbul reunites with the family. But this incident kinda reminds me of some Manmohan Desai film in which the fallen Bulbul, played by Amitabh, grows up to be a smuggler and his two brothers turn out to be etc etc.

Space Bar said...

km: just realised I never replied to this! This story had a happy ending - the chicks all learnt to use their wings and evaded the big bad predator. At least, for one day they did.

You mean that film where the fallen bulbul dies in the end? I know that story!

Valarie said...

This is cool!