THE YELLOW BIRD

The small yellow bird was tired. It was hot. The sun had been scorching since the morning. It was now mid-afternoon and the Yellow Bird felt as if she was going to faint with tiredness. She and her mate had been building their nest all day. Her mate, the male Yellow Bird had gone out some time ago to eat. They were both feeling tired. They had worked all morning and had rested when the sun had become very hot. By now it should have been a bit cooler, but it was not.

The Yellow Bird had to stop. She was hungry. Birds feel hungry often. They eat a lot, too! Very carefully, very slowly, she stepped away from her nest. No one must know that they were building a nest there. Although it was deep inside a bed of reeds in a lake, not visible from the open water, or from above, many of her enemies lived within the reeds. There were snakes, the fishing cat, the otter and many birds, who hunted for birds' eggs and chicks. She had not laid any egg yet. Still, it was good to be cautious.

Step by step, the Yellow Bird walked away from the nest and came to the edge of the reed bed. In front of her there was a clear channel of water. She stood quietly at the edge, silent and still like a picture. Only her eyes moved - looking both for enemies and food. Her yellowish brown colour mingled with the dry, brown reeds.

There were no signs of an enemy. No faint rustling of reeds to give away a stalking fishing cat, no shadow from the sky to show that a falcon was flying above, looking for a bird to catch. The water was alive with many insects. These tiny pond skaters, who slid on water on long, thin legs, looked like they were running on water. The Yellow Bird did not like to eat them. So she concentrated on the dragonflies flitting about in the air. Soon she had reached out and had eaten three, snapping at them with her long pointed beak, catching them in the air as they passed close by. She also caught a tiny frog and swallowed it whole.

Her hunger lessened. She looked this way and that for her mate. He was nowhere to be seen. The sun was still blazing. Everything around her was still. Even the air did not move. Only the pond skaters moved busily on the water. Leaves moved only when a bird or an insect touched them.

The Yellow Bird opened its bill, took in air to make her throat swell like a balloon and let the air out again. This she did again and again, very quickly. This made her feel cooler. Then she looked at the Weaver Bird who had stopped making his nest in the reeds and had flown out to sit close to her.

"I don't like this heat," said the Weaver Bird.

"It is really very hot today," said the Yellow Bird.

The Weaver Bird looked at the swimming cormorants. They did not seem affected by the heat. They were in the water, only their necks and heads showing. They dived in every now and then to catch fish. Often they succeeded. "They are lucky," he said. "They can remain under water and they don't feel the heat. If I tried it, I would drown."

The Yellow Bird did not say anything. Her mother had taught her that if she could not say anything good, she should not even open her mouth! She did not want to tell the Weaver Bird that she could swim a little, not as well as the cormorants, but she would not drown.

So she decided to say something else. "My mother used to say," she said, "that if it is so hot and still, a storm will come soon."

The Weaver Bird nodded. "Also, if the dragonflies are flying in large numbers, it is likely to rain heavily. And the dragonflies are really out in large numbers today, are they not?"

Suddenly the air around them was filled with joyous tree-tree-treetreetree calls of bee-eaters. Nearly seven or eight of them flew in, swooping up and down, zigzagging among the dragonflies, catching them and eating them in the air, or sometimes taking them to a nearby branch of a tree.