From the archive record
On a rainy monsoony day in New Delhi city, a crow brood is raised in a nest high above the Ring Road. The crow chicks stretch their feathers and eagerly await their graduation from the nest, even as they show eager red gapes to their parents, in order to be fed, sitting in a wet nest. The chicks are almost fully-grown and they sit at the edge of the nest, making perfunctory attempts at stretching and opening their wings and attempting flight, and then getting nervous and falling back into the nest. The first flight can be a nervous affair, for failure will land them in the middle of a busy road below! The parents sit at a distance, and urge the chicks to fly to them on a neighbouring residential building. The chicks are now much larger, and their orange gapes have turned more burgundy-red