The Wicked Bird

In most Indian folk tales, the crow is portrayed as a cunning, thieving villain.
And, when Uncle Pai created Kalia, he broke the tradition.  Kalia, the clever crow, was always doing good things like helping out creatures in distress -  NEVER the villain....

 The crow is the vehicle of Shani (Saturn) - the planet that is supposed to cast evil on one's life.
 Perhaps, for this reason, it is considered to be a symbol of bad omen.......
 As with the colour black -  the colour of the crow and the colour associated with Shani.
For the same reason, children who collect birds' feathers are forbidden from bringing the crow's feathers inside homes (especially if grandmas are around!).

To add to its list of woes, the crow has such clumsy ways and an unpleasant cry. Even the nest it builds is shabby when compared to the nests of other birds.You know, many a time, I have felt quite sorry for the crow.

Misplaced sympathies!! The crow is indeed a bad bird!
Sometimes, it pulls food from the mouths of smaller creatures like the squirrel and bullies smaller birds - chases them away from food sources, disturbs their nests,.... Yes! it spoils the nests of other birds. Let me tell you about it........

Meet this shy little bird on the left.... the munia. Here, he/she is searching for the right stuff to build a nest. Twice an year, at least one pair of munias choose their nesting place on the creeper on our wall.








This is a typical nest of the munia. As an admirer of birds and their nest building skills, I find it so fascinating that every bird has it's own pattern for building nests from locally available materials. And, birds of a feather have very similar nests!

Every year, during the nesting season, I spend some time watching birds choose grass, pull out tiny twigs, etc. With amazing understanding, the male & the female birds skilfully weave the raw materials and make their homes - they know what to do without any training (nothing 'bird- brained' about this!).

Once the birds begin to spend time in the nest, I leave them alone, hoping that things go smoothly. Most of the times, things do go smoothly. When the fledglings turn about 7-8 days old, the family abandons the nest.... too small for all of them, I guess.

Early Feb is nesting time for a lot of Indian birds. Every time I see a pair of busy munias,  I wonder if they are the same ones that were here before!
This time though, there was a crow - very determined to spoil things for the munias. Whenever I could, I tried to prevent it from pecking at the nest. Alas! One morning last week, I found this -

                                                          
                                                                           and, this -

 
 I also caught the crow pulling out some stiff looking grass from the broken nest.
Now, I didn't think of shooing it away - after all, another nest was being built
elsewhere.......