Indian Birds: Being a Key to the Common Birds of the Plains of India

BEING A KEY TO THE COMMON BIRDS OF THE PLAINS OF INDIA BY DOUGLAS DEWAR
A COMPANION VOLUME TO THE BIRD VOLUMES OF “THE FAUNA OF BRITISH INDIA” & JERDON’S “BIRDS OF INDIA”
LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXX
2nd Edition ( Revised )
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth, England. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
I fear that the patience of those who have been awaiting this little book must be well-nigh exhausted, so long has it been in appearing. I began it two years ago, but had to put it aside during the last few months spent in India prior to taking furlough, on account of the heavy work the threatening famine entailed; and when one is on furlough one only works at the rare times when there is nothing better to do!
The object of this book is to enable people interested in our Indian birds to identify at sight those they are likely to meet with in their compounds and during their excursions into the jungle.
There are several good systematic works on Indian ornithology, but the descriptions in these presuppose that the reader has the specimen in his hand and is able to examine it leisurely, feather by feather. To do this it is necessary to kill the bird in question—a procedure which causes pain to many and gives pleasure to very few. Moreover, unless the seeker after knowledge has some notion as to the order to which the bird he has shot belongs, he will find that seeking it out in the four bird volumes of the Fauna of British India series is a task almost as hopeless as that of looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Eha’s truly admirable book, entitled The Common Birds of Bombay , gives the reader a vivid description of our common Indian birds as they appear to the field naturalist; and I heartily commend this little masterpiece to every Anglo-Indian. But even this does not enable the observer to identify in a few seconds any bird he sees, for it is not written in the form of a key. The present book is an attempt at a key to the everyday birds of the plains of India, a dictionary of birds so arranged that the budding ornithologist is able to turn up any particular bird in a few minutes. This book is, I believe, the first of its kind that has been attempted.