Work in progress

 One of my chief pleasures in the late summer is to sit with my coffee at dawn and watch the birds on the fig trees. We have two wild figs. One is a bedu, a shrubby tree about 12 feet tall with fruits the size of jamuns.  A few metres away from it is a grand old doodhi that soars above the roof of our house and bears tiny fruit the size of pearls. 

I was sitting near the bedu and smiling at the antics of the birds on it when i noticed something curious about the birds..they all had a curiously unfinished look. The grey headed parrot had a light green head and a sorry excuse for a tail. The orange billed Himalayan magpie had forgotten its lipstick and forgotten to pin on its fluttery tail feathers. And the barbet, poor thing, had a moth eaten look about it. I remembered a summer a few years ago when all the parakeets were losing their feathers and scratching themselves, and worried that we were faced with an outbreak of a disease that spread across bird species.

And then a group of 4 magpies came by. 3 made a perfect landing on a branch of the bedu, one made the landing in two attempts. This lack of dexterity was possibly due to a lack of tail feathers or possibly due to a lack of the confidence that bright orange lipstick gives one. It is when the three adults, for such they were, left the drab little one behind and flew on to the doodhi that the truth of the matter occurred to me. The bedu is a creche. The adults dropped off their little ones on the shorter tree and flew onwards. 

No wonder the birds on the bedu all looked unfinished…each of them is still a work in progress.