After spending the day at the hospital (the first time ever, I might add), I've come to the conclusion that pidgeons aren't as useless as they seem at first. Their only purpose is to amuse and entertain people waiting outside the ICU.

In the early afternoon, I came across a male (I can only assume) pidgeon sitting on an air conditioner opposite where I was standing. This young bird was apparently trying several antics to get the attention of and lure hither a female (again, assuming) pigeon sitting one floor above him, everything but the head hidden by the AC. The first tactic: fluffing up his feathers. Apparently, size does not matter much to female pigeons, and, after about five "fluffings", the male discovered this as well and decided to switch to plan B: strutting. Now I've seen some serious strutting in my day, mostly by men who have flung their shirts off and have back hair enough to shame many a bhalu, but this pigeon meant business. Cooing seductively, green neck feathers shining in the afternoon sun, and gently bobbing his head back and forth in the special style that was imitated in many a nineties bollywood dance sequence ("Dil bolay Kuckoo Kuckoo!"). The female remained unimpressed, which was when the male decided to break out the heavy artillery. Abruptly stopping his strutting, throwing his head back and chest out, the male launched into the final maneuvre garunteed to make the knees of any feathered female weak, the one-leg stand. It would seem males can show their virility by standing on leg for extended periods of time, because after five minutes of the one leg stand, performed admirably by the male, the female flocked to the male's side and they began a beak to beak encounter, at which point I left them to their antics.

Worth a special mention was another, scrawnier male, attempting to enter some poor unsuspecting nurse's lounge. With the curtains open, the bird poked its head in a few times as I anticipated gleefully the bird's entering the nurse's lounge and the shrieks that inevitably follow any tiny animal's enterance into a room full of females, but he lost heart and flew away, a bit disturbed by the public displays of affection coming from the next ledge (male and female pigeon getting busy!).

Luckily, it all turned out okay and mum should be fine soon. :)