Everything about baya weavers has to do with detail and care. The choice of a partner by an individual bird and the choice of a nesting tree collectively by the group are never made flippantly. Baya weavers are finicky about location (a tree ‘teetering’ on the edge of a waterbody and providing in-built protection against predators) and finickier still about supportive infrastructure. They value quick access to nesting material. They end to shack up for the night in the reeds, their much preferred roosting environment. They seek grassy patches for grass seeds to feed on.
A palm tree in Ottiyambakkam opposite a gated community (Jones Cassia) had planted its feet in just the kind of environment described above. Access to nesting material and food and roosting sites has the assurance of a gilt-edged security. One just has to look around to realise it. A water channel is near-by. Despite the march of “civilisation’, Nature still has a degree of unfettered run in these parts. And unsurprisingly, the baya weavers “owned” the palm tree, and their nests, in use or out of use, would be hanging from the fronds much like decorative baubles from a Christmas tree. But a few months ago, the palm tree was divested of baya weaver nests and one could not help wonder if the birds had checked out of the location due to environmental stressors. One was proved pleasantly wrong when the nests reappeared, the baya weavers responding to the SW monsoon in customary fashion. Like many other avian species, the baya weavers synchronise the breeding schedule with the monsoons, south-west and north-east.
With nests — the majority of them at the early and middle stages of weaving — hanging once again, and the sight of male baya weavers developing these nests in an air of hope and expectation, the tree has come alive once again.
