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NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 10 Story 1: The Travelling Birds! — Write

Book page 164 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
1. Does the rosy starling visit your area? What is it called locally?
Answer

Find out by asking, not by guessing. The rosy starling comes to most parts of India in winter, but it is much commoner in some places than others — so the honest answer is the one you get from a farmer, a grandparent or a bird-watcher near you.

How to find out:

  1. Show the picture on page 164 to an elder in your family or to a farmer, and ask, “Does this bird come here? When?”
  2. Ask what they call it in your own language. Farmers usually have a name for it, because they see it in the fields.
  3. Go and look for yourself between about October and March, near fields, near flowering trees, and near a big roosting tree at sunset.
  4. Write down three things: the local name, the months it is seen, and where in your area you saw it.

Sample answer: Yes, the rosy starling comes to our area every winter. It appears around the end of October and stays till about March. We see it in big flocks over the jowar fields and on the flowering semal tree near the canal. In our language people call it tiliyar; my grandmother also calls it gulabi maina.

What to writeSample
Does it come here?Yes — every winter, in large flocks
When?About October to March
Where do we see it?Over the fields, on flowering trees, and roosting in a big tree at sunset
Local nameTiliyar in many parts of north India; gulabi maina or gulabi sarika in the Hindi textbook; bhoradi in parts of Maharashtra
If it does not come hereWrite that honestly, and name a different winter visitor that does come — a duck, a crane, a wagtail or a flamingo
Why the local name is asked for: A name in your own language is proof that people around you have known this bird for a very long time. Scientists call it one thing; your village calls it another; the Hindi book calls it गुलाबी मैना. All three names are for the same bird. Collecting the local name is a small way of saving knowledge that is slowly being forgotten.
Be honest: If nobody in your area has seen it, write “I could not find anyone who has seen it here.” That is a perfectly good answer and it is true. A made-up answer teaches you nothing.
Q2.
2. What does this story tell us about nature?
Answer

It tells us that nature is one connected thing, and that it takes no notice of the borders people draw. A bird born in Mongolia feeds an Indian farmer's field, and neither of them ever meets the other.

Four things the story teaches:

  1. Nature has no boundaries. The bird needs no passport. It crosses several countries in a single journey, because the air and the land are continuous.
  2. Living things depend on each other. The bird needs India's warm winter and its insects. The farmer's crop needs the bird. The insect, the bird, the crop and the farmer are four links in one chain.
  3. Something small can do something big. A bird you can hold in your hand crosses a continent and protects a field. Size is not the same as importance.
  4. Care has to be shared. The bird's summer home is in another country, its winter home is here, and it rests in several places in between. If any one of those places is destroyed, the bird disappears from all of them. So no single country can save it alone.
Grass and crops grow Locusts eat the crop Rosy starling eats locusts Crop saved One chain, four links — and the third link flies in fromMongolia Take away the bird and the second link grows out of control.
The bird is not a visitor to the field. It is part of how the field works.
Say it in one line: Nature is not divided into countries; it is divided into jobs, and every living thing is doing one of them. The rosy starling's job in India is eating the insects that eat our food — and it does that job for free, every winter, without being asked.
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