JOIN USOur association with pigeons has been for quite a long time. They are our regular visitors for many years now. We feed them grains of unpolished rice every morning and they seem to relish their breakfast. It was in the month of May, vacation time for the kids, we were out for almost all the weekends to some or the other destination. We have these pijus’s (fondly called by my daughter) coming even in our absence.
This happened when we were away over the weekends, the mother piju decided to book a cozy place for her delivery, the place being my kitchen exhaust window, a very cozy and safe place for the little one’s arrival. Since it’s a process, which would take almost 45/60 days, we decided to stop them from building a nest.
The next weekend our stay extended for a week, as we had a family function to attend, she had a lot of time to spread her wings and finally, had done what we were afraid of, she had layed eggs and waiting for them to hatch. When we came back, we were sad for a while, but accepted it, as it was too late, to take any action and decided to witness the process .
Eventually she delivered.We witnessed all the anxious moments the baby and the parents experienced right from day one, she was also getting use to our kitchen style,where the mother would very attentively turn to the kitchen and listen to the vishnu sahasranama. We would take lot of precaution, to avoid making loud sound of the cooker’s whistle, mixer and other utensils, so that the little one is not scared. The exhaust was temporarily cut, to avoid damage to the piju’s family.
As days passed, it was good watching them, The parents would protects the squab from an accidental spill out of the nest. When the mother would be away for some time, the little one would turn towards our kitchen,as if she is monitoring my activity.
The feeding process is relatively different, the feed is poured directly down the young bird’s gullet from the parent’s beak. It was fun watching all this .
Thankfully I work from home, where I have sufficient time to do the news paper changing . Thought for long a long time for solution, In the evening when my husband was back from work ,he was given the task of fixing this problem, he smartly put a cardboard on our side of the window, and allowed the ejection to hit the board, so we thought things are settling, by than we heard a cry of the whole family, when we saw a crow had attacked the piju’s. Also, saw the most amazing thing, how the strong parents fought back and shooed the crow .
Baby pigeons would make sounds by snapping her beaks or hissing continuously with demands and the mother once in a while would acknowledge in a loud voice ,and the baby would remain quite for some time, it’s the same as humans and start all over again nonstop The baby pigeons started, to slowly develop the ability to move, in the "coops" and as days passed with the assistance of her parents, learned to take small flights from her nest to our balcony parapet wall. Finally, the day arrived for the piju family, to bid adieu to me and my family, we did feel, the void for few hours, but then life moves on. Immediately got the little window closed with mesh forever.