The Fauna of our Flat

I’m beginning to think that life in a flat in the heart of a bustling city is not necessarily a life divorced from nature. The trees around our home have, over the years, been the source of plenty of visiting birds and animals.

At noon today, just as the current returned after its daily hour off and the fan came on, two crows just outside my window began to caw in unison. I can’t say if they have an in-built clock, or whether a gust of wind from the fan in my room somehow made its way out. The crows sat on their perches, beaks slightly open as if in mild surprise, little tufts of black on their heads, glancing suspiciously from side to side. A while later they had hopped on to an adjoining branch, and were joined by one or two of their brethren, looking now like a group of acquaintances lounging in the reading room of a gentlemen’s club. Then all of a sudden they seemed to be talking at the tops of their voices, and they flew off together.

On a lower branch sat a pigeon, mostly grey, but with a slight hint of shiny blue at its neck. Its red-rimmed eye was like a bead, looking more like a decoration than an instrument of sight. The pigeon began scratching the side of its neck with its beak, now its tail, now under its right wing. For the most part it sat peacefully, its bright orange claws curled around the surface of the branch.

This one was quiet, but pigeons can sometimes get on your nerves when they decide to exercise their syrinxes. Years ago a pigeon family made its nest on the parapet below one of our windows. (Sometimes they even tried to set up home in the bedroom lofts. Removing the twigs can be quite a task, because the birds can be quite persevering once they’ve identified a site.) The parapet family was a garrulous one, and as a boy I’d hear the lowing sound of the pigeons, distant-sounding and so unlike a bird-sound that I used to think it came from a buffalo on the road below us.

Today’s pigeon was also very slim, much more lithe-looking than the English pigeons I’ve become used to seeing over the last few years. It’s surprising that here, where people are generally more tolerant of the birds, they’re thinner, whereas in England, where they are considered pests and carriers of germs and people are asked not to encourage them, they have a well-fed, cared-for look. There they loiter on the ground, on pavements, tottering about leisurely, and will not budge if they’re in your way as you walk. They are self-assured.

It’s not just birds, though. Once a young bat lost its way and ended up in the flat. Once in, it was at a loss. Presumably its radar system was thrown by the odd environment. It fluttered its wings every few minutes, but could do no more than move jerkily a few feet to one side or another, bumping into walls and cupboards. It was a while before we could guide it to the window.

The three-striped palm squirrel, he (or she) of Ramayana fame, is another habitué of the dining and living room, scurrying across the top of the dinner table, occasionally knocking things down, sometimes clinging to the edge of the bamboo curtains in the windows. The Tamil word for them, Anil, so imprinted itself in my mind at a young age that I often think of India’s most famous leg-spinner as Squirrel Kumble.

Everyone must have a monkey story. Ours dates back to more than fifteen years ago. We watched through the grilled door separating the dining area from the balcony, where two monkeys had alighted. One of them sat on a cane armchair with a proprietorial air. The other visitor, more adventurous, found one of my grandmother’s soft cotton saris drying on the clothesline. It took the sari, drew it around its head and gathered it under its chin with one hand, while with the other it picked up a plastic cricket bat from the corner where junk was piled up, and began chewing on the bat’s handle.

The mango tree outside the balcony is now in fruit. Perhaps I’ll see my first parrot of the season if I keep my eyes peeled.