The first flight
One spring morning, the bushy croton shrub in our garden drew my attention as a pair of noisy red-vented bulbul birds (Indian Nightingales) frequented the shrub. I tiptoed to the shrub to peep into the deep foliage. To my utter astonishment, I saw three purple-spotted bulbul eggs resting in a small nest. After a fortnight or so, I once again paid a visit to the nest and found three nestlings with their beaks open wide, trembling tremendously. Their reddish, skinny bodies were featherless.
On a fine morning, I found two of the three siblings trying to fly. They were fluttering their feeble wings to raise their bodies to fly. Several attempts were futile. The mother bulbul was hovering around, screeching as if giving instructions on how to fly. Several hours passed. At last, the young bulbuls, with great effort, could fly up the lofty boundary
wall successfully. Both the parents, flying in circles around their chicks, appeared to be celebrating the first flight of their babies.
But for the third one, the journey from the nest to the air was not smooth. It was reluctant to come out of the nest. The mother bird was flying in with bits of food between her beaks. The young bird perched on the brink of the nest slipped in excitement and was compelled to fly from its nest, which was 6 feet above the ground. But it crashed on the ground with its wings wide open and lay there half dead, except for its eyes blinking after long intervals.
After a while, the nestling seemed to recover. It started moving its wings in quick succession. The mother bird became hopeful. In the meantime, attracted by the unwonted noise, a crow intervened. It swooped down and made several attempts to lift the nestling up. But the father bulbul, watching everything from a bush nearby, chased the raven aggressively despite being smaller in size. He was also joined by the mother bird. There was a great pandemonium. The crow flew away after a few futile attempts.
I was watching everything from the window. Just when I thought the third chick would not be able to fly high and join its other siblings, to my utter delight, it rose from its almost dying state.
The nestling gave it its all and flew up to perch on a low branch of a mango tree, then flew up another notch to
an upper branch and then another until it reached the top of the tree, about 40 feet from the ground.
The bird then flew some distance horizontally and then started soaring. I was thrilled to see it fly high. I tracked its flight until it disappeared into
the dense foliage of the trees in
the garden.