Sunbirds in My Balcony: Twice Over, Thrice the Charm

(Continued from Part 2. Part 1 here.)

I looked through the camera viewfinder. Two bright yellow faces came into sight.

As purple sunbirds of both sexes have similar plumage while young, it was difficult to distinguish them. I assumed them to be brothers.

My adoration quickly turned to horror as I realized they were not being particularly friendly with each other.

“The stronger one is stomping on the weaker!” I spoke to my husband frantically over the phone.

I imagined my husband taking a deep breath before speaking to me.

“That’s called survival of the fittest,” he said. “Why don’t we leave them to their own affairs?”

I wished I could speak in bird language to complain to the mother about her squabbling children. The dominant one would hog the food that their parents brought, shoving aside its brother. What if the weaker baby purple sunbird didn’t make it through?

Two weeks passed by with me constantly worrying about this sibling rivalry. Till one day, I found the nest empty. My heart skipped a beat.

“The baby sunbirds have flown away, Mumma,” my son said gleefully. “I saw one of them moving out of the nest and perching by the flowerpot, before its mom arrived and flew away with it.”

“And the weaker one?”

“There’s no one in the nest,” he asserted.

So, it wasn’t that weak, after all. I let out a breath of relief.

And that ended my tryst with sunbirds in my balcony – a dream that had come true, leaving me with an empty nest and an aching heart.

Or so I thought.

For, even before I could count 5 days since the nestlings left, another purple sunbird couple arrived.

Purple Sunbirds: Pair Deux

For a while, I thought my old sunbirds had come back. But sunbirds weren’t known to return to their nests once their offspring leave the nest – neither the parents, nor the little ones.

Then who were these?

Looking at the female bird closely I realised that she was smaller than the previous one, and a lot darker in colour. The male, however, looked nearly the same as the other.

The couple inspected the nest a few times, and soon, the female sunbird began repairing the nest in places the ‘seams’ had come off. I had read about birds preferring soft tufts of cotton for their nests and I surreptitiously placed them ensconced between leaves and other hanging plants in the balcony. To my great joy, the cotton tuffets were noticed not only by the sunbird but also by red-whiskered bulbuls looking for materials to build their nest.

Once, I was privy to a delightful showdown between the two when the female sunbird chanced upon the bulbul with a piece of cotton in its beak. What cheek of the bulbul to enter her territory and snatch a resource that was obviously hers! With a flurry of loud chirps, the feisty little sunbird launched herself upon the bigger-in-size bulbul. Caught red-handed and clearly outmatched by the tiny dynamo, the bulbul hastily dropped the cotton and fled.  

The nest fixed and renovated; the female sunbird took her place inside. The wait began for the second batch of babies in our balcony. Never even in my wildest dreams did I imagine that we would have two pairs of sunbirds nesting here in such quick succession. We stipulated that the previous clutch of eggs had hatched in around 15 days and hoped the same this time around, too.

Interestingly, this time, we heard a low metallic sound being emitted from the nest. The babies had arrived! We could now discern three distinct chirps – the sharp, chittering call of the father, the sweet tweet of the mother and the high-frequency pulsing sound of the nestlings.

Unlike the previous couple, this one seemed quite bold and didn’t scold us as often when they were doing their feeding and cleaning-up runs. It became quite a comforting routine during lazy afternoons as I sat on my sofa with my chai while the sunbirds flitted about a few feet away from me.

One day, while trying to document the new family via my camera, I discovered something incredibly fascinating. I hastily dialled my husband’s phone number.

“Guess what!” I skipped around, speaking. “We have THREE babies in the nest! Three!”

I always thought sunbirds laid only two eggs. This news came as an absolute stunner.

The grandmother in me reared its protective head triply now. Guests at our home would shrink back at the sight of me rushing from the kitchen, ladle in hand, if they even accidentally veered towards the balcony. This time, two babies emerged as dominant, ganging up against the third. I worried incessantly for the weaker fledgeling.

“Will you just let the mother handle her own babies?” my husband would tell me, exasperatedly.

I continued sulking.

Meanwhile, the weather in Bangalore had turned unprecedentedly hot, a strong dry wind blowing through the night. The little nest would swing violently in the windy turbulence, the tiny mommy bird sitting with her kids resolutely. I would check up on her from time to time and never once did she leave her place. What a gutsy lady! I am sure I shared my sentiments with the daddy bird.

Two weeks passed by, and the nesting phase was gradually coming to an end. The babies had grown up; I could tell by their weight bearing down on the nest, causing ‘cracks’ to appear. But there were always two mouths that came up when the parents arrived with food. The third one seemed to be losing out. Survival of the fittest, I told myself disconsolately.

My fear proved to be correct. I was lounging in my mother’s balcony, directly beneath ours, when I heard a commotion coming from my balcony. My son later told me that the babies were leaving the nest, and the parents were encouraging them from the side line.

“But bad news, Mumma,” he said. “The weakling is still in the nest. They have left him behind.”

I relayed the news to my husband.

“I think we will have to bring this one up ourselves,” I sighed. “Will you get a dropper on the way home from office?”

Visions of feeding the little birdie with a dropper first, and then scrounging for tiny bugs and spiders, swam in my mind’s eye.

“Let’s wait and see if the mother returns to feed the baby,” the sensible voice of the husband spoke. “If not, I will get a dropper.”

I had to leave home for some work that day and couldn’t check on the fate of the baby sunbird till late evening. I immediately ran towards the balcony on my return. The sight that met my eyes deeply stirred me.

The mother sunbird had come back to the nest, to be with her offspring that couldn’t make it to the outside world that day. This warmed the cockles of my heart. Why had I even doubted the sensibilities of a mother, even if she belonged to the wild kingdom?

The next morning, I saw both the parents feeding the baby. By afternoon, it had left the nest.

I heard the “cheep, cheep” of the baby birds in our community garden. Looking out the window, I saw tiny yellow dots zipping around the silver oak trees, following their parents. Some distance away, there were more sunbirds flying around. They would be the older batch, I reckoned.

My small balcony had helped two pairs of purple sunbirds to raise their progeny – five sunbirds in total. On one hand, I was happy that they chose my balcony, building the nest in the plant my father had gifted and trusting us. On the other hand, there would be a vacuum in our lives now that there were no sunbirds chiding us to change our seats.

We have left the nest as it is. The breeding season is over, but maybe they will recall us again next time and decide to raise a new generation in our balcony. We live in hope.

Read Part 1 here

Sunbirds in My Balcony (Part 1)

Read Part 2 here

Sunbirds in My Balcony (Part 2)