Birds in the balcony

It’s a 40-plus-degrees Delhi summer evening. The AC has been set for 18 degrees and it’s valiantly trying to reduce the intensity of the heat the living room receives through the day. I’m lying on my recliner, trying to relax at the end of a workday, listening to an increasingly-dystopian audio book, The School for Good Mothers. VK is watering the plants in the balcony and refilling the clay water bowls we’ve put out for the birds, for the second time in the day.

Suddenly, he calls me. There’s an urgency in his voice, usually reserved for quick happenings on the road or in the sky. Maybe it was the moon rising, fresh out of its pournami phase, beautifully low in a blue evening sky? I get out of the recliner, a process that takes a full ten seconds, and I’m worried I’ll miss it by the time I get to the balcony.

He points to one of the water bowls. I hesitate. “No, no, nothing scary,” he says. I peek into the bowl. Inside the empty bowl, caked with moss, lies a small egg.

“I saw two pigeons hanging out shady-ly here,” VK says, a mug of water in his hand, and I turn to the other side of the balcony to find a brown pigeon (!) nervously watching us. Another pigeon sits on the wall of the building opposite to ours. “And then I see that they’ve laid an egg here!”

The said water bowl is directly below the outdoor unit of the AC, a favourite spot for pigeons that I’ve grudgingly allowed to be without stuffing with thermocol to keep the pesky birds out. Every time I look out, I see a pigeon sitting there, staring poignantly into the distance.

I find it hard to believe that a bird would lay an egg in a bowl. I tell VK that it’s likely that there’s a nest on top of the AC unit and the egg has fallen into the bowl from there. My suggestion sounds implausible even as I go through it. There’s little chance the egg would have survived this fall.

“What do we do?”

I look at the brown pigeon shady-ly hanging out on the other side of the balcony. It’s the useless father, I’ve decided, though I haven’t a clue about sexual parts of birds. I suggest that we let it be and that maybe the father pigeon would figure out a way to carry it out of the bowl.

Another implausible theory.

VK laughs, reminding me of the size of their beaks. “They don’t have the brains or the body to do that…”

He walks to the bowl, ready to fill it with water. I stop him, saying eggs need a warm environment and the water might drown or kill any creature forming inside.

I’m glad it’s only an egg; we’ve seen the head of another bird – only the head – in the bowl before.

Pigeons have a long history in our houses, a history almost as long as VK’s and my marriage. I’ve written about them encroaching our house here. In this house, we’ve had to chase pigeons out many times. Once it was a pigeon in the bedroom – under the bed, comfortably nestled among my navaratri golu dolls. Another time it was a pigeon in the living room, a silly thing that kept flying into the window. And then a pigeon that happily sat on the writing table and then flew out on its own. The most testing one was a pigeon in the bathroom that kept staring at the cloudy window glass with an expression of despondency, its bird brain refusing to register that freedom was a couple of feet away.

An immediate response mechanism kicks in when we realise there’s been a pigeon intrusion: shut the doors, open a window; mildly panic; bring a rod, wiper, or broom to try to make some noise to goad the bird out; worry that it’s a baby pigeon that doesn’t know what to do; try desperately hard not to blame the other for leaving the balcony door open; google “how to chase a bird out of the house” (that’s me); and after it’s gone, a bout of cleaning and washing.

What has worked is leaving the bird alone and waiting for it to figure out its way, something that could take all day. Or getting someone to gently lift the bird and help it fly away. We worry if the bird carried out of the house is injured or has been marked by the human scent that would make its fellow pigeons reject its company.

Night has fallen and the egg still lies in the bowl. Will the egg survive? Will the shady parents rescue it? Will the kite that regularly pays us a visit seize the egg?

I will know tomorrow.

P.S. from May 19: This morning, VK saw a crow grab the egg from the bowl and fly away. I guess we can safely say that there won’t be a chick coming out of that egg.