Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

"WHOEVER would think that Philip Sparrow,perky,cocksure and bumptiously dominant in the city,would lose heart in the countryside and become a mild and modest bird! It is windy space that works the change.The assertive,loud chirp is toned down by open air to a weak treble and,no longer sure of themselves in enhanced surroundings,the bird seek comfort in company.They go about in tight flocks,settling in a kit on threshing-yard and harvested field,gleaning and stubble together.And when they fly,high and long as they rarely do in cities,they keep together still and cheep to one another as they go dipping and rising overhead-their voices in passage,refined by tall air,have a tinkling,almost musical quality.

Now I know it is all wrong to judge birds(or beasts for that matter)by our own experience and to attribute human motives to them.But I believe in the "one touch of nature" that "makes the whole world kin",and am unaware of scientific evidence against the view that animals can experience feelings and emotions known to us.Surely a bird feels fright and joy and depression as actually as we do-their manifestations may be very different in a bird and,of course,it is utterly wrong to ascribe intellectual appreciation or sentiment to it,but it feels these things all the same.

Once on a beach near Masulipatam,I realised what loneliness could mean.I was walking along a vast expanse of flat grey sand,with a flat grey sea beyond,and there was no life anywhere around except for an occasional scuttling crab towards which I could feel any affinity.There was a level breeze blowing,no friendly bush or mound broke the dreary,grey flatness stretching away from me as far as the eye could see,and suddenly I felt puny and insignificant.My stride seemed bereft of progress and my tracks on the sand only deepened the conviction of my futile nonentity.I was a bug crawling hopelessly on,and I was quite alone in the gathering dusk.I have often been alone but that was the only time I felt the need for company.It seems likely,to me,that birds in open country are more gregarious from somewhat similar cause.I think that animals, in common with us, gain confidence in restricted settings.

Naturally all diurnal creatures grow less jaunty as daylight fails and seek safe retreats,but I think the roosting of these countryside sparrows is significant of what I have been saying.They do not retire in pairs and parties to spend the night on a rafter or a lofty bough, but crowd in hundreds in a tangled bush or some low, much-branched tree, so thickly together that the foliage seemed suddenly doubled in the dark.Dozens huddle in rows along twiggy boughs,each now possessed of a confluent,coonobitic unity by the bodily contact of its birds.There is no prolonged hubbub at these roosts, as there is at the roosting trees of other birds.There is a confused chirping as the sparrows come in and settle,then the chirps go thinner and subdued till they fade altogether.By the time it is dark there is hushed silence,and the birds are huddled and immobile-but many of them are awake still.

Other birds also roost thickly in bushes,in scrub.Mynahs,Bee-eaters,Munias,Grey and White Wagtails, all crowd into bushes or trees at sunset,often in hundreds.These same birds,in the less open habitat of cities and towns,are less massively sociable when roosting: there are exceptions,but on the whole they are definitely less sociable in urban settings.

I believe it is too open,limitless expanse of the countryside that makes all these birds pack solidly together,as night draws in.There is safety in close numbers- or a sense of safety.However,the facts remains remarkable that sparrows,the most self-assertive and cocky of cosmopolitan creatures,should be so diffident,tentative and constantly together in scrub.-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 21 October 1951 in The Sunday Statesman
Republished on 24 June 2012