Tailor Birds nest in my Portico!

I am on Cloud Nine!


I just discovered that my favourite tailorbirds are building their nest in my Hibiscus plant which was in a busy locale - my portico. This doubles up as the play area for my son, I have my Budgie Cage there and to top it all off, that is the favourite corner for my Doggie, Brownie. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the pair buzzing around building their nest.


At last they had forgiven me!


I had done something foolish and did not even realise it for a long time! Since my Hibiscus plants were getting badly infected by mealy bugs, I had used some neem oil and dish wash liquid to get rid of them. I got rid of mealy bugs. But that drove my tailorbirds away too. Oh how they must have hated me for that! They have been visiting The Tree for over a decade and the hibiscus bushes all around my house made an ideal place for them to hunt insects and play around. They are the Common Indian Tailor Bird species (Orthotomus sutorius). They are abour 5 inches head to tail. They feed primarily on insects.

I did not even realise they were not visiting my garden for quite some time. I envied my neighbour who seldom cared about her plant, but her hibiscus were seemingly not affected by mealybugs while I had to constantly spray all kinds of concoctions to keep my hibiscus healthy. Inspite of all that ants just kept bringing more mealy bugs to my plants as soon the spray started wearing off. And that had me thinking. How is it that the garden on the other-side always seemed to be bug-free? I realised my good old friends were doing the trick for my pesky neighbour.


I started missing my Tailor birds. I could see them playing in my neighbour's garden, but they refused to come to mine. I was deploying all kinds of tactics to win them over. Then it struck me.


It must be the insecticide spray!


That must have been keeping the tailorbirds away. So I stopped spraying and frequently washed my plants. But still those cheeky fellows refused to forgive me.


Then one fine morning when I was feeding my Budgies, I saw a pair of tailorbirds sitting on my hibiscus shrub and tentatively looking around. An hour later it looked as if the female decided to build her nest in my hibiscus. I was surprised that they chose such a high-traffic location. The nest was just about a feet from the ground. My doggie seemed to be aware of their plans. She does not seem to disturb the birds and neither do they seem to be scared of her. In fact, we have seen them resting in the lowest branch just above Brownie's Kennel. Brownie has the habit of chasing anything that moves within the compound, be it a cat, or crow or other intruders. She somehow seem to not mind tailorbirds. They seem to get along very well. May be the tailorbirds chose my garden because Brownie would not let cats approach their nest. Looks like Brownie is their security guard.


The day is August 29, 2008. The Tailorbirds - we still have not named them - started to build their nest. They must have completed about 50% of the task when it started raining. We felt sad. I am not sure if the birdie chose the best place to nest as it seems to be exposed. My four year old son seemed a lot worried that the nest might be washed away in the downpour. I was worried that they might abandon the nest. With a heavy heart, we went to bed, hoping that the nest can withstand the onslaught.


August 30, 2008
As soon as I was up today, I went to have a peep at the nest. To my surprise, not only was the nest not even wet on the inside, the would-be parents were very busy continuing with the construction. I did not want to disturb them. So I provided a fresh supply of dried grass etc from the Budgie's cage, which the tailor birds seem to prefer for the nesting material and left them to help themselves.



To think that our whole family went to bed so worried about the nest! They seem to be stronger than us. And better in building houses. We have a lot to learn from them. By the end of the day it looked as if they had completed their nest.



Now only the female frequented the place. The male seemed to only help build the nest. Looks like his job was done and he was not around most of the time.


For the next two days, I did not see the birdies fluttering around. Worried that they may have abandoned the nest, I went and peeped in. I saw two eggs in the nest. There they were two cute small spotted eggs. The mother added two more eggs over the next two days. My son was so excited on seeing the eggs. The birdies did come and go often. They don't seem to mind having us around. We are happy that they have adapted so well to our noisy, high-traffic locale.


September 7, 2008
It has been a week of peeping, taking pictures, videos, keeping a watch on our maid and others so that they do not disturb them. The mother is brooding. And we are waiting for the eggs to hatch. Our whole house-hold is awaiting the advent of the new additions.


As the week progressed, our Birdie (the male does not seem to come now) has become so accustomed to living with us, that she does not even bother to fly away if I or my son peep into her nest. She just looks back at us. She flies away only if i get my camera too close to her. I do have a good camera - a Canon A360. But it has only 4x zoom. I need to get some better lens to get good pictures of my birdies. I should remind myself to get one soon.


We are all awaiting the birth of her chicks...

My Favourite Tree was cut down!

Oh! How I loved my Tree!

It was about 11 years back in 1997 that I planted it with own hands. I was running a pretty successful Computer Training Institute in Coimbatore (India) called A-SQUARE Computer Systems. I bought a small plot of land and decided to build a house of my own. One of the very first things that we did after the house was completed was to plant this tree. It was our favourite. And how we loved it!

My (Late) Mom loved it with all her heart and took so much care for it. We saw this sapling grow from strength to strength. As it grew, it started to attract all kinds of birds. And in 2008, it was one of the biggest trees in our locality. I used to feel sad even when we were forced to trim some of the branches (due to interference with electrical cables etc).


Imagine how devastated I was when the authorities informed me that they have to bring down the tree as they were laying a metal road. It made us all sad. The Tree was with me through my bachelorhood, saw me getting married, saw my Mom pass away and shared my joy when I became a father. It was with me when I had been on a waiting list for years to get a phone connection, to the advent of pagers and cellular phones. From days when i had to walk to the Indian Telecom office every now and then to check the waiting list and try to 'pull some strings' for a simple land-line connection, to days when we had guys trying to push us a mobile almost every day. The Tree saw me go abroad for assignments and comeback to take care of it.

All my efforts to talk some sense into the authorities were in vain. I could not save The Tree.

It was a May Flower tree and it grew so fast! The Tree was host to a variety of birds of the neighbourhood. We had the most dominant guys - Crows waiting for my wife to feed them lunch, The elusive Indian Crow Pheasant or Coucal (Centropus Sinensis) (Semboothu - Tamil), the ever-cheeky Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea, Koel - Tamil). And we had the omni-present Indian Mynah. These guys were regulars visiting The Tree all year round. We could also see seasonal visitors. Some wild sparrows and others. And the occasional Eagle and even Peacock! You could see pigeons waiting in the sidelines for their share of feed thrown on my balcony and groups of Parrots (Pacchai Kili - Tamil) flying by.

And I should mention my faourite Tailorbird families! They lived on the lower branches and can be seen resting at night on the lowest brach near my Kennel! Not sure if my Doggie Brownie stands watch for them! They seem to get along so well.

There was one sad development in these 11 years. The Tree lost its very early residents/visitors - the house sparrow! The house sparrow which was so abundant that we always took it for granted, has totally disappeared from the neighbourhood. Some relate it to the advent of Cellular phones and other 'waves'. God knows what! All that we realise is that my son is growing up without seeing house sparrows, which we all grew up with. I remember when we were kids all we had to do was sprinkle some rice and millets and scores of sparrows would converge on them immediately. We used to have fun trying to trap them with a stick and basket. (I never succeeded in that!) My son sure loses on all these. (But he might prefer a cell phone to a sparrow?)

And They all lost their house in one fell swoop! If only the authorities were a bit more environment conscious.

It was one of my saddest days! I wanted a final picture of The Tree. So I got out early and took a picture of it.

It was so sad to see The Tree go down. It was like torturing the guy. Cut here cut there, then there was an altercation between the guys who were up cutting and the guys below. The guys on the tree who were manually cutting the branches protruding into the house protested and stopped work. Another batch went and took over... Then they used to JCB to break the trunk, in vain. So the JCB guy pushed and puffed and finally after about 3 hours, they took it down.

Along with it went the habitat for all those lovely chirpy friends.

And to top it all off, the contractor passed a comment which would never forget. "This Tree is useless. My guys don't even want to use it for firewood as they say it will only smoke and will not burn well. If only this was a Neem or so it would have been useful...". With one comment he broke my heart.