राजिंदर दा ढाबा or self service swiggy for birds ?

This post is kind of  a follow-up post to 

http://www.shwetabhmathur.in/2016/06/blog-post.html

Going by the amount of birds it involves and the amount of food I’m tempted to call it "राजिंदर दा ढाबा "

In the post which I have mentioned above when I had written it 4 years back, it was all about birds and how they would come to drink water after much apprehension till it became a norm. A few months back all of a sudden my mom got an idea and she kept an empty plastic holder of some sort near the water bowl. When I questioned the purpose she said that it would be a place where birds would get their food. The original piece was an igloo for them with a cut large enough for one bird to peek into it. Going by the management funda I had studied way back in college, "जो दिखता है वही बिकता है" I knew that the birds won’t investigate and then eat their food even if I managed to get it and I had no clue in the first place that what the birds eat and where I would get the so-called birdseed? So I discarded whole of the plastic and kept only the plastic case which resembled a plastic plate for them. My next dilemma as to what is birdseed and from where would get it was solved by a famous shop which had opened near to my house. Those guys stocked birdseed and I grabbed one kg packets of each – Bajra (Millet) and Kakun (Foxtail Millet). From a drinking/bathing bar to a dhaba to a swiggy/Zomato self delivery service, it was going really fast and all within just 24 hours. 

I took an empty 2 kg distemper box, made it into a food corporation of India godown with equal mixture of both. It was not half packet of one and half of another. It was manual labour wherein first handful of bajra was put in the box and then a fist of kakun. This carried on till three levels and then the full mixture was thoroughly mixed in the box by hand and this went on until the whole box was filled. Just like the initial days of water wherein I was anxious that no bird was coming, same happened in this case also where the birds used to come for water and bath but did not touch the seeds. This went on for around a week and I became so desperate that I began mulling the childish idea of advertising this in pamphlets, written in bird language and keeping it near the water bowl and hoping that some birds would read it who actually knew how to read and write in their bird language. 

The breakthrough was by those little houses sparrows who came one day and after investigating the seeds went after it. In the starting days there were not much customers but I kept the dhaba up and running. It costed me a meagre 95/- for the two packs so it did not burn any sort of hole in the pocket. After the sparrows came some sort of big bird who makes a lot of noise and also came the doves. In the approx 1.5 months of the food service, the most regular ones are the houses sparrows and the doves. Both have different eating styles, sparrows don’t litter much but are kind of afraid eating freely when the dove is also there. The dove being a fast eater does litter the seeds from the plate but can clean up each and every tiny seed from the floor so fast and efficiently that you won’t even notice that it had spilled there. I also have had quite a few enjoyable experiences with those birds. Many a times I just sit at the stairs and watch them eat, a few times I am working in my room and the platter of the plastic with the beak outside gives me an indication that the plate is almost empty and its time for a refill. There are times when I’ve noticed that the seeds were scattered everywhere around the plate and did not refill it deliberately until the dove cleaned it up for me. Food wastage of any type is hated, be it the food we consume or the birds themselves. If it’s the birds who were making a mess, I make sure I don’t give them a single seed until they have finished up the existing serving. The maximum amount of birds I had one evening was 18. They were coming and going in batches from the trees of the park in front of my house and seriously speaking I had never heard so much chirping in a very long time, that day I had to refill the plate 3 times in just an hour. 

I call it राजिंदर दा ढाबा while my parents term it as the self-service swiggy but all things apart it gives me happiness to finally see the house sparrows and the chirping of the birds which are very difficult to hear in today’s times. I just hope that the birds learn to read so that I can find some human who knows bird language, can get pamphlets printed in that and I can advertise this food service to a much greater reach of birds :) .