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Bird-man of Chennai Inspires Millions to Love God’s Every Creation

Posted by: wp_56
Category: Best Volunteer Experience, blog, Volunteer Inspiration Stories

A stray dog follows you around sniffing for food-Do you stop by to give it some or just shoo it away? Probably the later! You see a roadside cow eating out of a community garbage bin. Do you stop by to inform about it to the local authorities & veterinary clinic or just blame the owner who couldn’t feed it well & move on? Again! Probably the later!!

Now Dogs they say will love you more than they love themselves & Cows are worshiped by Hindus as a Goddess. Still, we barely bat an eyelid & continue with our apathy towards anything that’s not “our own”.

Kindness & compassion towards all living beings is a mark of a civilized society. But with the increased stress of juggling the job, family & everyday routine, we as human beings fall short to provide care for other creations of God i.e birds & animals.

It is therefore not just inspiring but also heartening to see that some of us treat birds & animals as living beings & provide care and compassion without expectation. This story is of a humble camera mechanic in Chennai – Mr.Sekar, a common man with work & family woes who has gone out of his way for the past 10 years to make sure that more than 8000 birds including 4000 parrots get a few square meals every single day!

It all started out when one morning right after the tsunami, two parrots came to his terrace looking for food. Mr Sekar fed them & kept feeding them until, in the past 10 years, the number of his beneficiaries grew from mere 2 to about 8000! But this never stopped him, his compassion & love for the feathered friends is so committed that Mr Sekar may go without food some days but the Parrots & Pigeons have never missed a single meal in the past decade.

Mr Sekar starts in the wee hours of dawn every single morning to prepare racks of rice on his terrace for the birds to come & eat their fill. He does this twice a day without fail. Despite coming from a humble background with limited resources, this Camera mechanic spends 40% of his salary each month feeding the birds. He epitomises the saying that a true act of kindness is the one which is done never expecting anything in return!

Every summer we come across many messages on social media about keeping a bowl of water & rice outside on the terrace or gallery for birds & squirrels. But how many of us actually help those birds around us? Very few take this seriously; we spend 5 minutes forwarding the messages but not to do the needful!

A decade back, we used to get up from sleep hearing the joyful chirping of sparrows & birds. Sparrows have slowly disappeared from most of the cities because of lack of nesting space. Very soon other types of birds will follow suit due to the excess tree chopping.

Let’s donate our sweat to feed those birds or by creating shelters for birds or houses for sparrows around our accommodation, or putting a feeder on our terrace, parks & other places? And participate in such kind of bird conservation volunteering ideas.

Let’s create small colorful birdbaths from used up plastic tins or used containers on the terrace & fix a perch for the bird to sit on while it eats? Make sure the water is refilled every day in the baths & the container is cleaned regularly. You can also plant rose shrubs & other sweet-smelling flowering plants to attract the butterflies & bees to your garden.

These small acts of kindness not only help the birds but also instill a sense of responsibility in the little ones who are watching & learning from your every action. Lastly, we all need to be reminded that love & compassion are necessities & without them, humanity cannot survive.