The Quint is telling the full story of how climate change is reshaping lives. Help us do more. Become a member.It was a warm Thursday in the middle of June. Richa stood with a pair of Nikon binoculars under a tall Semal tree at Delhi's Lodhi Garden, her eyes fixed on a small cavity inside the trunk, some 10 meters above the ground. A male Indian Grey Hornbill was perched on it. Soon, a chick peeked out of the cavity. It was feeding time.Hornbills store food for their younglings in their throat. This includes eggs, figs, nuts, and insects. Perched outside the tiny cavity, the parent regurgitates food from its throat and uses its long beak to place it inside the hole, feeding its chicks.Richa silently observed the parent hornbill feeding its chicks, relaying her observations through the binoculars to her son, Vidith, who stood beside her with a sheet of paper.The two logged the time of feeding, which was around 6:30 in the morning, the number of regurgitations, the type of food, and the sex of the Indian Grey Hornbill parent.What Richa and Vidith were observing was not neccessarily an unusual sight. Regular visitors often spot native grey hornbills in Lodhi Garden between March and August every year. The birds nest in some of the many mature trees of Seemal, Saptaparni, and Neem.However, this hornbill is no ordinary one. The story that unfolded in Lodhi Garden this year offers another glimpse of how, in the face of urbanisation, city birds are finding refuge in public parks and urban forests and adapting to survive.Birders observing and discussing Peid Hornbill's behaviour.‘Death by Definition’: Why Climate Activists Are Protesting SC’s Aravalli RulingAn Unusual Visitor Arrives at Lodhi GardenThere has indeed been an unusual addition to some of the Indian Grey Hornbills’ nests at Lodhi Garden this year. In May, a gorgeous female Oriental Pied Hornbill, a species not native to Delhi, began frequenting the garden. The bulky black-and-white bird, with a chiselled yellow beak, was first spotted by frequent garden visitor Anuradha Mathur. The retired school principal-turned-birder saw the pied hornbill with two resident male Indian Grey Hornbills on 12 May.Later, it became clear that the female pied hornbill was actually feeding the grey hornbill chicks. Birders affectionately named her ‘Mausi’.An Oriental Pied Hornbill bird feeding an Indian Grey Hornbill chick.In hornbills, the female seals herself inside a tree cavity to lay her eggs and incubate them. During this period, she temporarily sheds her flight feathers because she no longer needs to fly. The male alone forages for food for the female and, later, the chicks.At Lodhi Garden, however, the opposite was happening: the female pied hornbill was foraging and feeding the chicks. It was a bizarre case—one that even experts struggled to fully explain.Following the hornbill story, in June, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) stepped in with an official monitoring programme to track the pied hornbill’s behaviour. Richa and Vidith were among the dozens of citizen volunteers who became part of the programme. Volunteers monitored a few selected nests across Lodhi Garden where the pied hornbill visited. The Butterfly Effect in Delhi: How Climate Change is Silencing InsectsHow City Birds are Adapting to SurviveIn the early days of the WWF programme, birders were unsure whether the Oriental Pied Hornbill was simply feeding the chicks to fatten them up before eventually eating them. The suspicion stemmed from a previous incident recorded along the Sirhind Canal in Punjab in 2021, where a pied hornbill first fed Indian Grey Hornbill chicks and later ate them. At Lodhi Garden, however, the Oriental Pied Hornbill fed on eggs, insects and berries from banyan, peepal and other trees.Finding food inside the sprawling, manicured Lodhi Garden is relatively easy. But the urban park is also home to several species of city birds, including Rose-ringed Parakeets, Black-rumped Flameback Woodpeckers, Common Mynas, Indian Spot-billed Ducks, Rock Pigeons, and tiny Jungle Babblers, many of which feed on berries. So, despite the abundance of food, competition persists, and omnivorous birds have an advantage.Nikhil Devasar, senior wildlife photographer, conservationist and founder of Delhibird Foundation, who has spent long hours photographing the pied hornbill at Lodhi Garden after it suddenly appeared in May this year, tells The Quint that since then, it has remained inside Lodhi Garden, with no instances of it eating the grey hornbill chicks.“Birds inside cities have limited space to compete for nesting sites and food. They still survive and try to adapt, but their populations continue to decline," says Mayuri Jani, who works with migratory birds in Kutch, Gujarat."That is why urban parks like Lodhi Garden are modern-day harbours for birds. These green spots within cities have a considerable amount of food and habitat options.”A grey hornbill feeding its chick.Mayuri adds that some city bird species, such as mynas and babblers, have expanded their diets. “In Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, birds feed on gathiya and roti.” This increases their chances of survival in metros.Another Climate Change Sign? Fewer Migratory Birds Passing Through IndiaHow did the Oriental Pied Hornbill Survive in Delhi? "The pied hornbill is suspected to have been kept in captivity, perhaps in an aviary, from which it probably escaped,” says Nikhil Devasar.The Oriental Pied Hornbill’s prolonged stay made one thing clear: the vegetation in urban parks, along with their manmade water bodies, offers birds a preferable place to inhabit. Besides, the capital is one of the few Indian cities with a relatively low-rise skyline and extensive green cover. Apart from the northern stretches of the Aravalli Ridge, urban parks such as Lodhi Garden, the Yamuna floodplains, and nearby birding hotspots like Sultanpur National Park together support Delhi’s diverse bird population.Fittingly, for the resilient pied hornbill, adapting to the garden was hardly a challenge.“Oriental Pied Hornbills are a very adaptable species… They’re found in villages, rural landscapes and semi-urban kinds of areas. They’re found in cities. There are lots of reports of the Oriental Pied Hornbill in Southeast Asia nesting in all kinds of, you know, clay jars and pots. They are also among the species that easily take to artificial nest boxes,” said Dr Aparajita Dutta during an online discussion on hornbills on 10 June, organised by Devasar’s Delhibird Foundation. Dr Dutta has been studying the hornbills of northeastern India with local communities since the 1990s.Indian Grey Hornbills are equally adaptable. At Aligarh Muslim University last year, researchers found hornbills nesting in non-native eucalyptus (safeda) and other non-indigenous trees on the campus. The planting of non-native trees for aesthetic purposes has meant that hornbills have adapted to new kinds of nesting sites. Urbanisation, on the other hand, has made habitat options increasingly limited. Hornbills also compete with other bird species, such as mynas, for nesting sites in the same area.“Because of this interspecific competition and this urge to breed, I think the female (pied hornbill of Lodhi Garden) is defending that area and the nest cavity for any future opportunities to breed, even though she doesn’t have a partner,” said Dr Dutta, referring to the hornbill at Lodhi Garden.The pied hornbill, it appears, wants to make Delhi’s Lodhi Garden its home.WWF volunteers.Explained: India’s Biodiversity Credits Can Succeed If Communities Are InvolvedMaking Room for Birds in a Growing CityThe hornbill saga at Lodhi Garden, as Delhi’s birding community calls it, brought attention to the city’s resident birds. In urban spaces, resilient bird species feed on anything, build nests from whatever they can find.In a Times of India interview, Trevor Price, a Himalayan bird scholar, discussed how traffic has affected bird calls. Speaking about the capital, he said,“This little warbler (bird) breeds in the Himalayas and goes northward into Siberia, but it spends its winter in India. It transits through Delhi, which is extremely noisy. We think the warbler has changed its call because of Delhi’s loud traffic. The new call can be more easily heard against that noise than the old call.”Traffic, pollution, competition for nesting spaces, processed food and cement are changing the habits of city birds, potentially disrupting the entire food chain. “Birds help scatter seeds and control pests. A farm that naturally has a diverse variety of visiting bird species needs less fertiliser. Even inside cities, birds help control spiders and ants. If birds vanish, the population of pests will explode,” notes Mayuri Jani.Over the years, interest in birdwatching has expanded across cities, despite being an expensive and time-consuming activity.Birding looks at nature not merely as consumers, but as a thriving ecosystem in its own right. It helps us understand how humans can coexist and evolve alongside ecosystems, while encouraging an alternative idea of ‘sustainable development’.The recently notified Delhi Master Plan 2047 allows vertical development, including a framework for buildings taller than 100 floors within the city. This is likely to affect the city’s skyline, which is currently conducive to bird survival.“I find it personally stressful when ecological destruction takes place in the name of growth and beautification,” Richa said, adding:“It is very important to know our native trees, birds and animals and not forget them. In the name of beautification, only fast-growing species of plants are often promoted inside cities. But there’s a whole natural ecosystem that sustains itself on its own.”Inside Tamil Nadu's Bid to Save the Glorious Hornbills of Western Ghats