I watched two bulbuls pick the black pepper berry in our garden. After the one above picked a few, it moved away and another Bulbul came to take its turn, as shown in the photos below.
There are a few striking behaviour styles of this flock of the Bulbuls. I suspect that there are about ten of them, who move between trees in the morning and evening in our garden.
When they come to this pepper plant, where the pepper has become ripe, the Bulbuls take turns to pick the berry.
They tend to pick it form the same site, although there are ripe berries elsewhere in the plant.
The birds wait for their turn and do not force the way to interrupt another bird.
The orderly and disciplined behaviour is not common for all avian families.
There are four of them who come to our backyard to feed on the banana we leave for them every morning. After they finished their meal, they would sometimes come into the kitchen.
Birds develop their own strategy to take care of each other, when they live in a community.
During the debate on Manipur, in the Raja Sabha of the Indian parliament, the Prime Minister of India who broke his silence after one year spoke, how the government is watching the ethnic conflict seriously. He did not care to talk about the two hundred or so people who died or about sixty thousand people currently living in refugee camps or hundreds of children missing a school year. He made a political statement on Manipur and but not a humanitarian view of the situation. I wish he cared to share sympathy and express regret for the happenings.
One member of the parliament from Manipur choked a few times while talking about the suffering of people in Manipur state. The local government belonging to the political party that is the ruling dispensation in Delhi, has also been indifferent. The periodic eruption of violence might have the sanction of the political party that rules the state of Manipur, which is what is presumed by many.
The Bulbuls live and behave harmoniously in a community. The people of different communities live with a quarrelsome attitude in Manipur. A paradox beyond our reasonable comprehension.
The Yellow Bittern above, belonging to the heron family, was perched on a coconut palm, when I was returning after watching the Bulbul in the garden. I guess it is normally a resident of north India. I presume it is on its migratory journey.
Birds can move away from their habitat and return to their regular territory after a while. They move between territories for food, shelter during inclement weather, breeding and for other reasons. They continue the pattern the primary inhabitants of different countries who lived a nomadic life in the past. But humans now are residents and citizens, to whom the civil society owes protection and amenities.
Th failure to do so affects families and their coherent living. Some children from Manipur are studying in one boarding school in Kerala, about which there was news in the national news papers. What a state of unsettlement for children and their parents!
I wonder whether our political leaders have a feeling heart! Listening to the debate in the parliament, I suspect that they speak a hurting language to down size each other. I fear that both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition used a style, language, tone and content, which were meant to hurt. The language of conversation is provocation and confrontation! I find a similar tone in the debates in the television discussions. A speech is judged to be good, if it had gives away some punches to the opposing speaker! What a distorted thinking!
I go back to the Bulbuls, who showed the way of community living, each caring for the other!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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