‘Homing’ birds? So their food is nei-ther safe nor sufficient. Now lets find out if they have enough space to nest and breed. Windowsills, parapets, ventilators, crevices in tiled rooftops, chimneys, balconies, parks, hedges, and bushes—these are their ideal nesting spaces. Right? The Indian baya (weaver bird), pigeons and finches are known to build their homes in small grooves in buildings and hedges. We all know that. But in the changing urban landscape, it is getting increasingly tough to find these familiar nesting nooks and crannies any more. Also, most of the birds are choosy about their roosting places. Sparrows, for instance, avoid living in the same tree canopy with other birds like crows, mynahs and parakeets. They try to find trees that are close to their feeding zones—like parks, gardens, waterbodies. Finches, starlings and bayas look out for grassy meadows, shrubs and hedges. They use grass as fibres to weave their nests and, of course, peck on the insects that usually thrive here.If green patches go, so do the birds. Bird-less Bangalore Bangalore was once a favourite haunt of birds of all feathers. Because water bodies—hedges, parks, trees located near them—provide an ideal habitat. And the “Garden City”offered the birds an array of beautiful lakes. Now the wetlands have shrunk into sewage-filled dump yards, or have high rises built on them. So the birds are abandoning Bangalore. Dr Abdul Urfi, an ornithologist in Delhi, says, “Open windows used to be the favourite site of pigeons. Now thanks to the invasion of the air coolers and air conditioners, most of our windows are sealed off. The birds have lost their domain.” Sparrows used to build their nests below tiled roofs. Now such roofs have became a thing of the past, and sparrows have lost their nesting spots.

Survival of the fittest

Homicide zone

In fact, modern architectural trends are proving to be a real menace for the avian population in more ways than one. For instance, veterinarians working in the Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi say that they treating a growing number of patients with a hitherto-unheard-of com-plaint. Injuries caused due to pecking at glass-walled high-rise buildings!

Exposed rafters, lofts in car parks, ledges over rolling shutters and open eaves — common fea-tures in almost all the cities now — are death traps for the birds.
Because they can be accessed easily by natural predators like cats, dogs, crows and kites — leaving the bird population completely vul-nerable to their attacks.

But not all of them are dying. Some like crows and kites are thriving. Why? Because they have been able to adapt themselves to the changing environment, faster than the other birds.And have simply taken over the domain of the less adaptive varieties.

Bird watchers call this process synurbisation.

MN Chaudhari, a zoology pro-fessor from Saran in Bihar, has been studying the changing life style among avians. According to him, in most India cities, kite popu-lation has increased because kites are natural survivors. They feed on the ever-expanding dump yards and prey on the smaller and more vulnerable species. “I noticed that the arrival of a flock of kites is always announced by wild chirpings of sparrows. Then I realised that this was because the kites rampage the nests of sparrows, and drive them away!”

This is true of the entire corvid family—crows, ravens, magpies and jays. SACON in Coimbatore has found that while the city has recorded a rise in the number of crows, its swallow population has dropped. Some ornithologists have even attributed the surge in kites to the dying vultures! Now that there are fewer vultures to feed on animal remains, kites are getting a larger share of the dead!!