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Showing posts with label Dove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dove. Show all posts

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Is bajra bad for birds ?

A neighbour sent me this message : 

श्री पक्षीयो का अस्पताल गुरुग्राम से यह वाट्सअप सभी को भेजने के लिए भेजा है:-

🔹अधिकांश कबूतर की दोनों आँखे खराब हो जाने के कारण ये अब देख नहीं सकते

🔹इसके अंधे होने का कारण है इसे डाला गया #बाजरा,

🔹जी हाँ, गर्मियों में पक्षियों के लिए खासकर कबूतरों के लिए बाजरा अत्यंत घातक है।

🔹बाजरा बहुत ही ज्यादा गर्म होता है जिसे खाने से कबूतरों के चेहरे पर मस्से निकलने शुरू हो जातें है, चेहरा गल जाता है और आँखें भी गल जाती है

🔹अँधा होने के साथ-साथ कबूतर की चोंच मुड़ जाती है

🔹मुंह अंदर से पक जाता है

🔹खाना पीना बन्द करने के बाद कबूतर तड़प-तड़प कर मर जाता है। कई बार हम कबूतरों को #सतनाजा भी डालते है

मतलब सात तरह का मिक्स अनाज।

🔹जिसमे बाजरा भी होता है, लेकिन ध्यान रहे कि बाजरे के चन्द दाने गर्मी में कबूतर की दर्दनाक मौत का कारण बनतें है, जिसके लिए दाना डालने वाला भी अनजाने में इस पाप का भागीदार बन जाता है।

🔹सभी दोस्त इस पोस्ट को ज्यादासे ज्यादा शेयर करें और जो भी आपके आस पास पक्षियों को दाना चोगा डालते हैं उनको इसके बारे में जरूर समझाएं

Wheat is the best for birds.
++++++++++++++++++++
I wrote back to the neighbour : 

I trust you checked this information a bit before forwarding it ? I for one can find nothing on the net in its support. 

The Gurgaon hospital you mentioned has a page on bird disease and mentions nothing of the kind you sent : http://www.birdhospitalgurgaon.com/facility

In all the studies and advice from wildbird organizations that I looked up (all unfortunately abroad, information from none of the Indian ones showed up regarding millet / wheat), millet is mentioned as a favourite food for songbirds. Wheat is not mentioned at all. Most of the advice on the net showed up from the USA which is otherwise a big wheat producing country. 

One advice site for pet pigeons mentioned wheat and said it was not suitable for them. 

In our own garden, we saw pigeons for the first time in late Feb when a neighbour closed her balcony with netting. 2-3 pigeons showed up at our garden then and even now visit occasionally. Susan said they used to spend the day at her balcony and must have started coming to us because access to the balcony was closed off due to netting. 

We get large no. of sparrows in our gardens. Also doves, munias, bulbuls, satbhais, tailor birds, robins, water hens, partridges, and some others whose name I don’t recall. We serve bajra, and also in a separate container cleaned three times a week, leftover food. Watermelon or other left over fresh fruit is also served. 

I think the main attraction for birds in our garden are lots of thick vines – bougainvillea, madhumalti, juhi and clerodendron which offer shelter, flowers, insects. 

No pesticides are used in our garden so birds find earthworms in the soil which are critical to raise their young. Pesticide use should be discouraged in all gardens and then birds abound. If there is a problem with pests, neem leaves are very useful and I can be asked how to use them. 

Water provision, cleaning and changing the water atleast twice a week (and during summer topping to full daily if possible) is even more important than food I think. We provide many different water bowls as so many birds like to drink and bathe in them.

Please share the above with those you shared that bajra post with, if you did share it.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Our Home has been taken over by Doves !

We have always had doves around, but lately we have positively been taken over ! They coo morning, afternoon and evening.. Make sorties to the feeding stations.. Roost on the Shehtoot tree - as indeed I can see one now as I type.. while another surveys the scene from our balcony railing..

These pictures were taken a couple years earlier.. 

I read up a bit about the pigeon / dove branch of birds  - apparently, they bob their heads in an attempt to keep their vision constant.


The guys you see in this picture are Laughing Doves.. common across India..

Two famous extinct species, the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon, belonged to this branch of birds. 

The Passenger Pigeon was once the most numerous species of bird on earth

In 1871, a single breeding colony was estimated to contain over a hundred million birds, yet the last individual in the species was dead by 1914. The species is thought to have been massively over-hunted for food for the poor.