GOING GREEN

Home Sweet Homes

If you are lucky enough to have spotted a bird in the process of building a home, you will be able to see exactly how it goes about its business.

Bittu Sahgal

Photo: Anil Loke / Sanctuary Photolibrary

Some of these homes are almost invisible to the human eye, while others do not seem to look like what we expect homes to be. Yet, once your eye is trained to pick them out, you will discover more about how animals build their homes and a lot about their habits. Look up on trees to spot the nest - is it long and thin or broad like a soup bowl? Does it hang from a branch or is it wedged into a fork in trees? What type of bird goes in and out and how often? If you are lucky enough to have spotted a bird actually in the process of building a home, you will be able to watch and see exactly how it goes about its business. Make a special note of the season in which you see it. Even if you happen to live in a flat, I am sure you have noticed pigeons flying in and around the house. Note how they manage to make themselves and their young comfortable in any corner, even on the top of air conditioners popping out of windows! What do they use to build their homes? Try to identify each item. You may come up with an alarming variety of strange building material! How does our intelligent friend, the sparrow, make himself at home in our huge, noisy cities?

Another interesting tree-dweller is the squirrel in your garden. He is not a very tidy house-builder. If you examine the forks of trees, you will notice its nest - an untidy ball of twigs, bark and sticks. A clumsy collection no doubt but the baby squirrels themselves, you can be sure, will be quite comfortable. Likewise, look out for ant homes, termite hills and tunnels. Do not forget the expert web-spinner, the spider. I am sure all of you have had the opportunity of watching a spider at work. When he is most active and how he is able to catch his food in his own home without even having to venture out like most animals? There is so much information you can gather on these living things while watching them build their homes - how many young ones they give birth to, when they give birth to them, how they build their homes and the materials they use while doing so.

But remember not to go very close to the nest and disturb its inhabitants. You might have to deal with very angry parents! Observe and study from a distance. You will still have plenty to jot down in your notebook!

Here is a simple experiment that will allow you to closely observe the 'goings-on' in an ant nest, which is normally under such 'undercover' activity. You can build your own ant nest (called formicarium) where you can feed them, study them and come up with some amazing discoveries of your own. This is how you should go about it. All you need is a simple, plastic lunch box, three to four test tubes, red cellophane paper, cotton wool and some Vaseline.

Put some red cellophane paper over a major portion of all, except one of the test tubes, which will be used as nesting tunnels by ants. This is necessary because ants love the dark and they perceive red as dark. You can place these test tubes at the bottom of your lunch box.

It is very important to keep your formicarium moist. To ensure this, reserve one test tube solely for this purpose and keep it half-filled with water, pushed in with some cotton wool and close to the others, at the pit of the box. Smear some Vaseline along the top of the box, so as to prevent ants from creeping out. Ants love honey, so in order to feed it to them, you will have to mix some in water - 1 part honey to 10 parts of water; soak a little piece of absorbent kitchen cloth in this mixture and leave it in the corner of the box. If you can collect some dead insects, nothing like it! Add them in as protein for your ants. Your home is all set for its inhabitants.

Now go and collect your ants. You should collect approximately 100, which should not be very difficult if you look under stones etc. Scoop them up and place them carefully in formicarium. The nest is ready and the rest is left for you to watch. Observe. Try to reason out and most importantly discuss any peculiar behaviour with friends. Make sure you note down everything in your diary!

Ants disfiguring a frog

Photo: Dr Anish Andheria / Sanctuary Photolibrary

Bittu Sahgal is the Editor of Sanctuary Magazine