Taking a bullish snake by the horns

Chandigarh: Rose-ringed parakeets are the proverbial green fairies flitting in our groves and gardens. Their ceaseless chatter and antics make for a pleasant ambience around the house. The male's blackish-crimson necklace never fails to charm the human eye. The 'tota' couple is considered a 'romantic' one as they are a picture of devotion, and indulge in nuanced and prolonged courtship rituals. No wonder, mythology ascribes them as the 'vahanas' (carriers) of Kamadeva, the God of Love, and his consort, Rati Devi. But however soft-hearted and lovey-dovey the parakeets may be, they are rather pugnacious as parents and fling themselves into the thick of danger when their tree hole nests are marauded by Rat snakes, cobras and Bengal Monitor lizards (Goh).
Parakeets frequently fail in the uphill task of protecting their eggs and chicks but not without resisting the predator with scoldings and harassing attacks. A nasty peck delivered by a curving, hard, reddish beak can be quite painful for the predator as it is the infamous beak that the 'maali' knows makes short shrift of his stone-hard guavas! The battle for the nests is not just faced by parakeets but other small birds such as Spotted owlets. This correspondent witnessed a quartet of owlets taking turns to attack a Rat snake that had entered the nest in a tree cavity bordering the Government Fish Seed Farm near the Sukhna lake. However, the smart snake drew its body completely into the nest hole depriving the enraged owlets of the pecking-and-harassing forays. Ultimately, the snake had its fill and the owlets sat around the tree with a funereal air hanging about them. At the Sukhna wildlife sanctuary, a forest chowkidar, Ranjit Singh 'Sagar', recorded on his cellphone a Goh invading a nest hole and throwing down a parakeet chick. At the Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur, photographers recorded vivid scenes of a gutsy parakeet couple taking on a huge Goh at their nest hole.
At times, the frantic parakeet parents are joined by other parakeets in nest defence. Other bird species, such as barbets, crows and sunbirds, add to the clamour but seldom dare to take on the mighty snake slithering into the parakeet hole. Snakes and Gohs get to know there are eggs and chicks in a nest hole by observing the heightened activity of the parents in nesting season as they make repeated forays to their young ones.
For the fledglings inside the nest hole, they can only quaver in helplessness and hear the increasing clamour outside. Then, instead of their doting parents entering with a fruity tidbit, it is the spectacle of the snake slithering in with a flickering tongue and stony, beady eyes. It is the kind of horror that Little Red Riding Hood would have faced in the fairy tale when the wolf pounced on for her from granny's bed. For the bird chicks, the cozy nest home turns into a chamber of horrors, the grim and dim light in the deep recesses of the hole blacked out by a looming, remorseless killer, the jaws opening and snapping shut till all eggs and chicks are gone. But nature is red in tooth and claw, and the snake, too, must feed and breed. The die-hard carnivore cannot be proselytised into turning "vegan"! For, there is no distinguishing between 'might' and 'right' in the ways of the natural world, even if it entails bloody bouts of cradle killing.
With interests in manufacturing and petrol pump retailer ships, Harjinder Singh is also a keen wildlife photographer. He has a Rat snake marauding in the Drek tree nests of parakeets and Brown-headed barbets in his garden for the last few years. He lets the snake be, and has not got it removed or "rescued". Every April, there is a scene of the snake battling the parakeet parents and watched by a nervous assembly of other birds. On Monday, Singh photographed the male parakeet's frontal attack and daring bite of the snake, which had entered the nest. The female chipped in with bites on the snake's rear portions. "I observed that for the last few days this snake was 'inspecting' the parakeet and barbets nests in the tree for eggs and chicks. When it got into the parakeet nest on Monday, both the parents launched ferocious attacks and I got a clear photo of the male parakeet with his beak biting into the snake. Ultimately, the snake withdrew and fled down the tree," Singh told this writer.