Forty-three.

I don’t know why I counted this today. Perhaps because sitting out on the balcony and watching birds at leisure is a rare luxury. A pair of oriental magpie-robins has made their nest in a hole in the wall on our balcony next to the banyan tree, just above our washing machine. The bold male is a frequent visitor to our birdbath. He sits out on the railing afterwards, cocked tail and glossy pied plumage flashing in the sun. The gentler, greyer female is happier perching closer to the hole, murmuring to herself. They aren’t the only ones raising families in a suddenly mellower human world. A yellow-fronted green pigeon is sitting on her eggs on a Neem branch seven feet off the middle of the silent road.

Forty-three.

That is how many visits the dutiful male robin has made to his hole in an hour. Each time with a morsel for his brood and mate. Caterpillars, spiders, butterflies, berries, and once, half a Marie biscuit. The eggs have hatched, and the parents, especially the noisy male, are busy. He sings at dawn, dusk, and in the shade of the banyan at noon. The female ticks and churrs when mynahs or bulbuls approach.

A curious oriental magpie-robin | Photo Credit: Oviya Vijayakumaran, Madras Naturalist’s Society

Forty-three.

All that effort, and yet they mean nothing in nature’s relentless way. We awoke this morning to a commotion of alarm calls and the racket of flower-light wings. White eyes and tailorbirds are shouting from the shadows. The mother robin is crying from her perch on the washing machine while the agitated male is desperately flying in and out of the banyan’s foliage. His song today is tinged with grief. A raider has made off with one chick and left behind a dead sibling on the ground with the remnants of the demolished nest. Probably the spotted owlet that roosts amid the drooping leaves of the Ashok next door.

Forty-three.

I counted, and now I cannot forget. The robins have, though. They have moved house across the street to an unused letter box. They are building a new home. And they are singing again.

(This was the winning entry to the Bird Essays contest by Round Glass Sustain & Juggernaut Publishing. Published with permission.)

The author is a birder and writer based in Chennai.