Glimpses of Indian Birds

by Douglas Dewar

BULBULS’ NESTS—II

The simplest observations often bring to light the greatest scientific truths. The force of gravity was revealed to Sir Isaac Newton by the falling of an apple. A kettle of boiling water gave the idea of the steam-engine to James Watt. The watching of bulbuls, which are so common in our Indian gardens and verandahs, suffices, apart from all other evidence, to demonstrate how erroneous is the orthodox doctrine that the survival of the fittest is the result of a struggle for existence among adult organisms. This year (1912) six bulbul tragedies have occurred in my garden, and the year is yet young.

The scene of one of these tragedies was the identical plant in which occurred the disaster described above, which happened about nine months ago. Thus we see that among bulbuls destruction takes place mostly in the nest, whole broods being wiped out at a time. The same is, I believe, true to a large extent of other species that build open nests. There are three critical stages in the life of a bird—the time when it is defenceless in the egg, the period it spends helpless in the nest, and the two or three days that elapse after it leaves the nest until its powers of flight are fully developed. When once a little bird has survived these dangerous periods, when it has reached the adult stage, it is comparatively immune from death until old age steals upon it. If zoologists would perceive this obvious truth there would be an end to nine-tenths of the nonsense written about protective colouring. Most birds are not protectively coloured; moreover, if they were so clothed as to be invisible amid their natural surroundings they would not derive much profit therefrom.

The labour of the six-and-twenty little bulbuls who, to my knowledge, have failed to rear their broods has not been lost altogether, for it has taught me something about their ways that I did not know before. Those birds showed me how quickly they are able to build a nest.

Very few observations regarding the duration of nest-building operations are on record. The reason is not far to seek. A nest at the very beginning of its existence is difficult to discover, and if come upon by chance is not easy to recognise as an incipient nursery. The nests we find are usually complete or in an advanced stage of construction.

I was strolling in the garden about 8 a.m. on the 3rd March last, when I noticed a bulbul with a leaf in its bill. I saw the bird fly into a small cypress bush and then emerge therefrom without the leaf. A short search sufficed to reveal the place in the bush where the leaf had been deposited. Placed by this leaf I found another leaf, a small branch of Duranta with some yellow berries attached to it, two or three small straws and some cobweb. These apparently had been thrown haphazard into the bush. Had I not seen the bulbul go into the bush carrying a leaf, I should not have suspected that these few things were the beginning of a nest, for they had no semblance of one. The bulbuls could not have been working at that nest for more than half an hour when I discovered it. On my return thirty minutes later to look at it I found that the amount of material collected had doubled, but the nest was still without any definite form; it was a mere conglomeration of rubbish. The two leaves already mentioned had dropped down nearly a couple of inches below the other material. The additional material consisted of more Duranta twigs with berries, straws, dried grasses, cobweb, and a piece of what looked like tissue paper. Half an hour later the rapidly increasing collection included a long piece of worsted, but this was not wound round any of the branches. In most bulbuls’ nests that I have seen a certain amount of cotton or such-like material is used to support the cup-like nest by being bound to one of the neighbouring branches, although cobweb is the chief means of attaching the nest to its surroundings. In this particular instance, however, the worsted was not so utilised; possibly the pliable, upright branches of the cypress did not lend themselves to this kind of attachment. At this time (9 a.m.) the collected materials had nothing of the shape of a nest, but some of the tiny twigs were entwined in the cypress branches.

At midday, four hours after I had first seen the nest, I was astonished to find that it had assumed a saucer-like form. I was not a witness of the process whereby the original shapeless mass was made to take this shape, but my observations on other nests have convinced me that the nest is shaped entirely by the bird’s body and feet. When a bulbul brings material to the nest, it drops this on to what has already been collected, sits on it, and proceeds to arrange it with its feet, which work so vigorously as to shake the whole plant in which the nest is placed. In the middle of the process the bird usually turns on its axis, a right angle, and thus the interior of the nest becomes rounded by the bird’s breast. All new material is added to the inside of the nest.

At midday, then, the nest in question was a shallow saucer composed chiefly of Duranta and other twigs, dried grass, and bast. The leaves mentioned above had fallen some way below the nest, and the worsted and tissue paper had been crushed into a ball at one side of the nest.

By the evening more material, chiefly bast in bands about a quarter of an inch broad, had been added, and the nest looked almost as complete as some bulbuls’ nests in which I have seen eggs. But that particular pair were evidently bent on building a very substantial structure.

By 8 a.m. on the following day the cup of the nest had grown deeper, and its walls had been considerably thickened. By the evening of the day the nest was practically complete. On the 5th March the finishing touches were put to it in the shape of a few grasses and prickly stems.

The diameter of the completed nest is between 2½ and 3 inches. The nest is rarely quite circular. It is about 2½ inches in depth. The length of its diameter appears to be determined by that of the bird’s body (exclusive of head and tail) which is the mould that shapes it. A bulbul sitting in the nest looks very cramped and uncomfortable, with the tail projecting vertically upwards, the neck stretched out, and the chin resting on the rim of the nest. The crest of the sitting bird is folded right back.

On the early morning of the 8th March the first egg was laid. On the 9th a second egg was deposited. My little boy, to whom I had shown the nest, then thought that he would like a couple of bulbul’s eggs poached for his breakfast, so, regardless of the feelings of the bulbuls, removed both eggs and took them to the cook! As that individual declined to cook them, my little son replaced them, or rather one of them, for he broke the other. On the morning of the 10th a third egg was laid and deposited in the nest beside the other. The usual clutch of Otocompsa emeria is three. On the morning of the 11th I found the nest half pulled down and empty and on the ground beneath I saw a few bulbul’s feathers. Some predaceous creature, possibly a cat or a mongoose, had seized the sitting bulbul in the night.

The above notes show that a pair of bulbuls can build a nest in a couple of days. This observation was confirmed by another pair who constructed a nest in my verandah on the 23rd and 24th March. On the 22nd I noticed a pair of bulbuls prospecting in a croton plant near my daftar window; nevertheless, although I examined that plant carefully, I found no traces of a nest. On the next day, however, I saw that the nest had been commenced. During the three following days I had no leisure in which to look at the nest, but on the 28th I found a bulbul sitting on three eggs, so that, as only one egg per diem is laid, the first egg must have been deposited on the morning of the 26th at the latest.

On returning to my bungalow at about 10.30 p.m. of the 28th, I found some of the servants collected in the verandah. They showed me a dead brown tree snake (Hipsas trigonata) which they had killed in the plant containing the bulbuls’ nest. The reptile had evidently discovered the nest and crawled up the stem of the plant. At its approach the incubating bulbul had made a great commotion which attracted the notice of the servants. They promptly killed the snake. On my return the eggs were lying broken on the ground, and I was not able to discover whether the fluttering bulbul or the servants striking the snake had caused their downfall. No further eggs were laid. Bulbuls seem always to desert a nest when their eggs are destroyed. It is worthy of note that the snake attacked the nest in the dark, and on all other occasions on which I have observed similar tragedies they have been enacted at night. What, then, becomes of the elaborate theory of protective colouration?

XXIV
NIGHTINGALES IN INDIA

The nightingale shares with the Taj Mahal the distinction of being an object on which every person lavishes high praise. All who hear the song of the nightingale go into ecstasies over it; similarly, every human being who sets eyes on the Taj waxes enthusiastic at the sight thereof. Some years ago a writer in the Globe stated that a patient investigator compiled a list of nearly two hundred epithets bestowed by poets alone on the nightingale’s song, and I doubt not that an equally patient investigator could compile an equally long list of adjectives lavished on the Taj Mahal by those who have attempted to describe that famous tomb. The consequence is that every superlative in the English language has been appropriated by some person, so that he who nowadays wishes to bestow something original in the way of praise on either the nightingale or the Taj is at his wit’s end to know what to say. Recently I met in a railway train a Portuguese gentleman who was paying a visit to India. Needless to say, I asked him what he thought of the Taj. He promptly replied: “Le Taj, ah! c’est un bijou.” I feel that by way of paying the necessary homage to the nightingale I cannot do better than repeat “c’est un bijou.”

Ornithologists assure us that there are three species of nightingale. There is the Western nightingale (Daulias luscinia), which visits England in the summer and fills the woods with its glorious melody. Then there is the Eastern species or variety which is also known as the sprosser (D. philomela), and, lastly, the Persian nightingale, the hazar-dastan or bulbul of the Persian poets. This last variety is known to men of science as Daulias golzii.

It would puzzle the ordinary man to distinguish between these various races. The length of the tail is one test. If the nightingale have a tail well over three inches in length it is the Persian form, if well under three inches it is a Western nightingale, and if about three inches a sprosser. The nightingale, as every one knows, is a small bird varying from 6½ to 7½ inches in length. Both sexes dress alike and in the plainest manner possible, the upper plumage being russet brown and the lower pale buff.

As we have seen, one of the Persian names of the nightingale is “bulbul.” This has given rise to considerable misunderstanding regarding the existence of nightingales in India. Every one knows that India teems with bulbuls, and as “bulbul” is the Persian for nightingale, the average Englishman labours under the delusion that Hindustan abounds with nightingales which fill the soft Indian night with melody, at the time

“When mangoes redden and the asoka buds

Sweeten the breeze and Rama’s birthday comes.”

Now, as a matter of fact, the Indian bulbul has nothing whatever to do with the nightingale. There can, I think, be but little doubt that the Persian poets have misapplied the word “bulbul” in using it to denote the nightingale. The term “bulbul” is familiar to every native of India as meaning one of the Brachypodous birds belonging to the genera Molpastes, Otocompsa, etc., and as there are true bulbuls in Persia, one of which, Molpastes leucotis, is a good singer, it is probable that the poets, who are notoriously bad naturalists, have misapplied the name of this songster to an even better singer, namely, the nightingale. And this name, having been immortalised by Hafiz and others, will always remain. We must, therefore, be careful to distinguish between the true bulbuls, which are not very brilliant singers, and the nightingale, which in India is known as the bulbul bostha, or bulbul basta. Numbers of Persian nightingales are captured and sent in cages to India, where they are highly prized on account of their vocal powers. A good singing cock will fetch as much as Rs. 400 in Calcutta. The cock nightingale alone sings, and as he is indistinguishable in appearance from the hen, a would-be purchaser, before paying a long price for one of these birds, should insist on hearing it sing. Nightingales thrive in captivity if provided with a plentiful supply of insect food. The Western and Eastern forms have both bred in captivity, and the Persian variety will doubtless do likewise if given proper accommodation.

Indian bulbuls, then, are not nightingales. Nor are nightingales common in that country. Oates, it is true, includes Daulias golzii among the birds of India, but, in my opinion, on insufficient evidence. He admits that it is of extreme rarity in the country, “only two instances of its occurrence being known.” Hume, in October, 1865, had a Persian nightingale sent to him, which was said to have been procured in the Oudh terai. It is probable that neither this specimen nor the other whose presence is recorded in India was a wild bird at all; as likely as not they were caged birds that had escaped from captivity! The nightingale is certainly a very retiring bird, and since, if it occurs in India, it can be only as a winter visitor when it is not in song, it is possible that it might be overlooked. But in face of the fact that many good ornithologists have spent long periods in Oudh without ever having seen a nightingale, and the bird has never been observed anywhere else in India, it seems most improbable that nightingales ever stray into India. What, then, are we to think of the statement of Dr. Hartert, a German ornithologist, who says of the Eastern nightingale that “it winters in Southern Arabia, parts of India (e.g. Oudh) and East Africa”?

Here we have an excellent illustration of the adage “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” a good example of how erroneous statements creep into scientific books. Dr. Hartert has heard that nightingales have been recorded in Oudh, so jumps to the conclusion that the species winters there, even as it does in Egypt. This statement will doubtless be copied, without acknowledgment, into many future text-books, for plagiarism is very rife among men of science; and thus the popular notion that nightingales are common in India will be fortified by scientific support! Nightingales undoubtedly do winter in India—but only in cages. We have many fine songsters in Hindustan, but the nightingale is not one of them.

XXV
THE WIRE-TAILED SWALLOW

Were each species of bird to record in writing its opinion of men, the resulting document would certainly not be flattering to the human race. The inhumanity of man would figure largely in it. The majority of the feathered folk have but little cause to love their human neighbours. Men steal their eggs, destroy their nests, kill them in order to eat them or to decorate women with their plumage, and capture them in order to keep them in cages. A few species, however, ought to regard man with friendly eyes, for they owe much to him. The swallow tribe, for example, must acknowledge man as its greatest benefactor. Take the case of the common swallow (Hirundo rustica), the joyful herald of the English summer, the bird to which Gilbert White devotes a particularly charming letter. All the places in which this species builds owe their origin to human beings. The myriads of swallows that visit Great Britain in the spring find in the chimneys of houses ideal nesting places—hence the birds are known as house or chimney swallows.

“The swallow,” writes White, “though called the chimney swallow, by no means builds altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses against the rafters, and so she did in Virgil’s time:

‘Ante

Garrula quam tignis nidos suspendat hirundo.’

“In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called ladu swala, the barn swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe there are no chimneys to houses, except they are English-built. In those countries she constructs her nest in porches and gateways and galleries and open halls. Here and there a bird may affect some odd, peculiar place, as we have known a swallow build down the shaft of an old well through which chalk had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure; but in general with us this Hirundo breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those stacks where there is a constant fire, no doubt for the sake of warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is a fire, but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and disregards the perpetual smoke of that funnel, as I have often observed with some degree of wonder.”

In the days before man began to build substantial houses for his habitation, the swallows can have nested only in caverns and under natural ledges in cliffs, so cannot have existed in anything like their present numbers. Hirundo rustica is a common bird in India. During the winter it spreads itself over the plains, and may be seen, as in England, dashing through the air after tiny insects. In the East the gentle twittering of the birds as they propel themselves through the air sounds doubly sweet, since it recalls scenes in our distant island. The swallows which winter in India migrate to the Himalayas or Kashmir or Afghanistan, where they rear up their families.

But to-day I write of a more beautiful bird even than Hirundo rustica, of the most beautiful of the swallow kind, of a species on which Gilbert White could not have set eyes. Like the common species, the wire-tailed swallow (Hirundo smithii) is a glossy, steel-blue bird. The forehead, crown, and nape are chestnut, and all the lower plumage, including the chin, is white. In this last respect it differs considerably from the common swallow, which has the chin and throat chestnut, a black pectoral band, and the rest of the under parts pale reddish brown. In both species there is a white spot on each of the tail feathers, except the median pair. These white spots are very conspicuous when the bird sits with tail expanded.

The chief characteristic of Hirundo smithii is the great development of the shafts of the outer tail feathers. In most swallows the shaft is elongated. In H. rustica it extends 2½ inches beyond the other tail feathers. In the wire-tailed swallow the shaft of each of the outer tail feathers attains a length of seven inches, and is thus more than twice as long as the body of the bird. This swallow, indeed, looks as though two pieces of wire had been inserted into its tail; hence the popular name, which is far more appropriate than the scientific one. Jerdon called this species H. filifera, an excellent name, but among cabinet ornithologists the excellence or appropriateness of a bird’s name counts for nothing. Many years ago a member of the Smith family made the acquaintance of the bird, and it was named after him. This name being the oldest is the one by which we must call the bird until some bibliophile manages to unearth some yet earlier name.

The elongated shafts of the outer tail feathers are brittle and easily broken, so that it is the exception rather than the rule to see a bird with both the delicate filiferous appendages complete.

The habits of this swallow are similar to those of other species, except that it is probably not migratory. It is found all the year round in the plains of North-West India. It is rare in Lower Bengal, Assam, Upper Burma, and in South India. Although it occurs in the Madras Presidency, it is not often seen as far south as the city of Madras. Since water is always conducive to the presence of the small insects on which swallows feed, these birds usually seek their quarry in the vicinity of the liquid element, and naturally roost near their feeding grounds. This fondness for the neighbourhood of water doubtless gave origin to the once prevalent belief that some swallows did not leave England in the autumn, but remained behind and hibernated underwater. This idea is, of course, erroneous.

Wire-tailed swallows like to roost in considerable companies in the minarets of mosques or in other lofty towers. Unlike swifts, swallows frequently perch. Telegraph wires are a very favourite resting place. When these are not available the birds will settle on stones or tufts of grass.

As chimneys are scarce in the plains of India, the wire-tailed swallow has to look elsewhere for nesting sites. True to the traditions of its family, it almost invariably elects to build on some structure erected by man. Nine out of ten nests are built under the arches of low bridges or culverts, preferably those under which there is a little water lying. The nest projects from the arch like a little shelf. It resembles a deep saucer in shape, and is composed of a shell of mud, lined with feathers.

Wire-tailed swallows obtain the mud they use from the edge of water, and carry it in the bill in precisely the same way as the house martin does in England. One of the prettiest sights of a London suburb is to watch the house martins taking the materials for their nests from a muddy road, which they always contrive to do without soiling their white-feathered legs. Muddy roads are not common in India, hence wire-tailed swallows are not able to resort to them for nest-building materials.

The cup of the nest is usually fairly thick, especially at the place where the nest is attached to its foundation. The outside of the cup has a rugged appearance, and each of the projections which it displays corresponds to a mouthful of mud added to it by the bird. According to Mr. James Aitken, the birds occupy about four weeks in building the nest, “a narrow layer of mud being added each day and left to dry.”

When once a pair of wire-tailed swallows have made up their minds to nest in a certain spot they are not easily deterred from carrying out their intention. Mr. Aitken admits having on one occasion removed two eggs, out of a clutch of three, but the little mother sat on and hatched out the one egg that remained. A man of my acquaintance, who, although an egg collector, is not altogether devoid of the milk of kindness, always carries about with him one or two sparrow’s eggs which he exchanges for the birds’ eggs he wishes to add to his collection. One May day at Lahore this person came upon a wire-tailed swallow’s nest which contained one egg. This he removed, and substituted for it a sparrow’s egg. The owners of the nest either did not, or pretended not to, notice the exchange, and the hen laid two more eggs, so that when I visited the nest three days later I found that two legitimate eggs had been placed beside the spurious one. The incubating bird sat very tight, and allowed me to touch her, and had I wished to do so I could easily have caught her; such is the strength of the incubating instinct in some birds. The nest in question was built under a low arch, one end of which was blocked up. The only other occupants of the arch were a number of wasps. Birds seem to have little or no fear of wasps. Indeed, it is rather the wasps that fear the birds, which have a disagreeable habit of swallowing them, notwithstanding their sting and warning colouration! Three weeks later I paid another visit to the arch in question, and found that the swallow’s nest had been removed by some person or persons unknown, but under the same arch was another nest containing two eggs. It would seem that the plucky little birds, undaunted by the fate of their first nest and eggs, had quickly set to work to make good the loss.

XXVI
WINTER VISITORS TO THE PUNJAB PLAINS

Six months ago we welcomed the birds that came to spend the summer with us—the tiny iridescent purple sunbird, the emerald bee-eater, its larger blue-tailed cousin, the golden oriole, the superb paradise flycatcher, the yellow-throated sparrow, the solemn night heron, and the noisy koel.

These have all built their nests, reared up their families (except, of course, the koels who made the crows do their nursemaids’ work) and departed. The sunbirds were the first, and the koels the last, to go. By August the former had all disappeared, but throughout the first half of October young koels were to be seen, perched in trees, flapping their wings, opening a great red mouth, and making creditable but ludicrous attempts at cawing.

Even the koels have now gone and will not reappear until the sun once again causes us human beings to wonder why we have come to this “Land of Regrets.”

The places left vacant by the summer visitors are being rapidly filled up. Lahore has for birds a winter as well as a summer season. The former is the more important of the two. So numerous are our winter bird visitors that it is not feasible to enumerate them in this place; we must be content with a glimpse at those which come in the greatest numbers and are, therefore, most likely to attract attention.

The earliest to arrive are the rosy starlings (Pastor roseus) or Gulabi Mainas, or Tilyers as the natives call them. They are easy to recognise. They go about in great flocks. When a flock settles on a tree it is a point of etiquette for all the individuals that compose it to talk simultaneously. The head, crest, neck, throat, upper breast, wings, and tail are glossy black. The rest of the plumage is a beautiful rose colour in the adult cock and pale coffee colour in the hens and young cocks.

Rosy starlings arrive in Lahore as early as July. As they do not leave us until the end of April, and are supposed to nest in Asia Minor, it might be thought that they are the discoverers of some specially rapid method of nest-construction, egg-incubation, and bird-rearing. This is not so. The fact is they do not migrate simultaneously. The birds that were in Lahore in such numbers last April are not those which appeared in July. These latter probably migrated to Asia Minor in February.

It is only in the spring that the rosy starlings go about in very large flocks; these are the result of “packing” prior to migration. At other times the birds occur in nines and tens and associate with the ordinary mynas, feeding either on fruit or grain.

They appear to be the favourite game bird of the native of the Punjab. They are quite good to eat. A charge of small shot fired into a tree full of them brings down a dozen or more, so that a “crack” shot is easily able to secure a large bag and brag about it to his friends!

Several other species of starling visit the plains of the Punjab during the winter, arriving in November. These, like the familiar English starling, are all dressed in black, glossed with blue, green, and purple, and spotted with white. The species-making propensity of the professional ornithologist has led to the division of these into a number of species, although it requires an expert with an ornithological imagination to distinguish them from one another. They go about in flocks and, like the rosy starlings, all “talk at once.”

The winter visitors that appeal most to the sportsman are the game birds—the grey quail, the various species of duck, teal, geese, and snipe. The quail (Coturnix communis) are the first to appear. They arrive in Lahore late in August or early in September. It is the moon rather than the temperature that determines the date of their arrival. They migrate at night-time and naturally like to travel by moonlight. A few grey quail remain with us all the year round. These are probably birds that have been wounded by shikaris and have not in consequence sufficient strength for the long migratory flight across the Himalayas. The fact that some quail remain in India throughout the hot weather, and are able to breed successfully, shows that their migration is a luxury rather than a necessity.

It is a universal rule that all migratory birds of the Northern Hemisphere breed in the more northerly of their two homes. This seems to indicate that they were formerly permanent residents in the latter. Geology tells us that thousands of years ago the climate of this earth suddenly became colder. The result was that the more northerly portions of it were rendered uninhabitable for birds during the winter—the frost killed insect life and the snow made vegetable food difficult to procure; hence, the birdfolk were confronted with the alternative of starving in winter or going south in search of food. They chose the latter alternative. So powerful is the “homing instinct”—the instinct that man has developed so wonderfully in the homer pigeon—that these migrants invariably returned in the summer to their old homes for breeding purposes.

The climate has again become milder, so that for many migratory birds migration is no longer necessary; nevertheless, they still perform the double journey every year. The force of habit is strong in birds. Those Australian finches which are imported into India, even when kept in aviaries in the Himalayas, nest in December and January as they did in Australia, where these are summer months.

The ducks and geese that visit the Punjab in winter are too numerous to be dealt with in this brief essay, which of necessity is not exhaustive. It merely deals with such of the winter visitors to the Punjab as are seen every day. Every winter Northern India is invaded by millions of grey-lag and barred-headed geese, and by hundreds of thousands of brahmany ducks, mallard, gadwall, teal, wigeon, pintails, shovellers and pochards. The other game birds which visit the Punjab in great numbers every winter are the jack and the common snipe.

The Indian redstart or firetail (Ruticilla rufiventris) is one of the most striking of our winter visitors. No one but a blind man can fail to notice the sprightly little bird with St. Vitus’ dance in its tail. The head, breast, neck, and back of the cock are grey or black according to the season of the year. Birds’ clothes wear out just as ours do. But every bird is his own tailor. When his clothes wear out, instead of resorting to the West-End tailor or the humble darzi, he grows a new coat. This process is technically known as the moult and occurs at the end of summer in most birds.

Each of the feathers composing the coat of the cock redstart is black with a grey margin. When the feathers are new only the grey edges show, the bird, therefore, looks grey; gradually the grey borders become worn away, so that the bird turns black. The remainder of the plumage of the cock, except the two middle tail feathers, is brick red. The hen is reddish brown where the cock is black or grey. As the bird hops about in the garden it looks very like a robin, but the moment it takes to its wings it becomes transformed, as if by magic, into a flash of red. The red of the tail and back is scarcely visible when the bird is not flying, for the wings cover the latter and the tail is closed like a fan; the red feathers all folding up underneath the middle brown ones which act as a cover. During flight the red tail feathers open out and the wings leave the red back exposed—hence the sudden transformation.

The redstart should be a favourite with Englishmen, because in habits and appearance it resembles the familiar robin of our country. The perverse Indian robin (Thamnobia cambayensis), it will be remembered, insists on wearing its patch of red, as Phil Robinson hath it, on the seat of its trousers.

The Indian redstart arrives towards the end of September. In the autumn of 1906, September 22nd was the date on which I first noticed a redstart in Lahore. In the following autumn I did not see one until September 27th. Bird-lovers of fixed abode in India would be rendering no small service to ornithology if they would record carefully, year after year, the dates on which they first observe each of our returning summer and winter visitors.

When the migrant wagtails arrive we feel that the hot weather is really over. Three species of wagtail are common in Lahore. One of these—the pied wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis)—is a permanent resident. The other two—the white wagtail (Motacilla alba) and the grey wagtail (M. melanope)—come to us only for the winter. The last is easily distinguished by its bright yellow lower plumage. The white and the pied wagtails are both clothed in black and white, but whereas the face and throat of the former are white, the whole head of the pied wagtail is black save for a white eye-brow.

Wagtails live almost entirely on the ground. Throughout the winter dozens of them are to be seen on the gymkhana cricket ground, sprinting after tiny insects, and stopping after each capture to indulge in a little tail wagging. All three species of wagtail feed exclusively on insects, so that the migration in this case, as in that of the quail and of many other birds, is obviously due to the force of habit.

Another winter visitor that cannot fail to attract attention is the white-eared bulbul (Molpastes leucotis), a bird loathed by the gardener on account of the damage it does to buds.

Two species of bulbul are abundant in Lahore: this one and the Punjab red-vented bulbul (Molpastes intermedius). The latter, like the poor, is always with us, while the former shakes the dust of Lahore off its feet and departs when the weather becomes hot. The permanent resident has a red patch under its tail and a black head and crest, while the migrant wears yellow under the tail and has white cheeks.

The family of birds of prey furnishes us with a large number of winter visitors. Those most likely to be seen in the neighbourhood of Lahore are the steppe eagle, the long-legged buzzard, the sparrow hawk, the peregrine falcon, the kestrel, and the merlin. It must not be thought that all our Indian birds of prey are migrants. A number of species remain in the plains throughout the hot weather to vex the souls of their weaker brethren. Curiously enough, there is among the permanently resident raptores a counterpart, a nearly allied species—I might almost say a “double”—of nearly every migrant. The tawny eagle (Aquila vindhiana) and the steppe eagle (A. bifasciata) are so alike that some authorities are inclined to regard them as a single species. But the former lives in the plains all the year round and breeds in and about Lahore, while the steppe eagle goes to the hills in the hot weather to breed, and appears quite unable to endure heat. The one caught at Wazirabad in the cold weather of 1906-7 and confined in the local “Zoo” died comparatively early in the hot weather, whereas the tawny eagle, kept in the same cage, has all along flourished like the green bay tree. The shikra (Astur badius) and the sparrow hawk (Accipiter nisus), although ornithologists now place them in different genera, are so much alike that it is easy to mistake one for the other, yet the former is a permanent resident while the latter is a migrant. Similarly the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) is a winter visitor to the plains of the Punjab, while its cousin the laggar (Falco jugger) is a permanent resident. In the same way the Turumti or red-headed merlin abides with us all the year round, while the common merlin (Aesalon regulus) visits us only in winter.

Almost the only raptorial winter visitor that has not a cousin who lives in the plains throughout the year is the kestrel (Tinnunculus alaudarius), the bird known in England as the Windhover. This is perhaps the easiest to identify of all the birds of prey, on account of its habit of hovering on vibrating wings, like the pied kingfisher, high in the air, over a spot where it thinks that there is quarry in the shape of some small rodent. If the surmise be correct the kestrel drops like a stone and seizes its quarry in its talons; if it sees nothing it sweeps away with a few easy movements of its powerful wings and hovers elsewhere. The only other bird of prey that hovers like the kestrel is the black-winged kite (Elanus caerulus). This is mainly white and so cannot be confounded with the kestrel.

The explanation of the fact that one species of bird of prey leaves the plains in the hot weather, while a nearly related species remains, may perhaps be found in the nature of their food. Birds of prey are to a greater or lesser extent specialists; while quite ready to devour any small bird, reptile, or mammal which comes their way, they lay themselves out more especially to catch one particular species, and if that species migrates it follows that the bird that preys upon it will also migrate. Thus the peregrine falcon lays itself out to catch ducks and naturally goes with them to their breeding grounds, just as the hawker of cheap wares, who preys upon the mem-sahib, follows her to the hills in the summer.

In conclusion mention must be made of the Corvi which visit us in winter. The arch-corvus, the grey-necked rascal (Corvus splendens), of course, abides with us all the year round. The raven, too, is to be seen at all times of the year, but is more abundant in the cold weather than in the hot. During the summer months we see comparatively few ravens; in the winter they are exceedingly numerous. Every evening towards sunset a long stream of them may be observed flying in a westerly direction to the common roosting place. There is a similar stream of crows that flies in a north-westerly direction. The rook (Corvus frugilegus) is a permanent resident of Kashmir and the North-Western Himalayas, but in mid-winter many individuals are driven by the cold into the Frontier Province and the Punjab; some come as far south as Lahore, where they consort with the crows. If the winter is a severe one large numbers of rooks come to Lahore, otherwise these birds are not very numerous. The same applies to the jackdaw (Corvus monedula), but he never comes in such numbers as the rook. There is in the octagonal bird house in the Lahore “Zoo” a compartment in which there is a “Happy Family” of ravens, rooks, and jackdaws, with an Australian crow-shrike and a Nicobar pigeon to keep them company. Thus every one who cannot already do so may learn to identify the various Corvi which visit Lahore in the winter.

XXVII
A KINGFISHER AND A TERN

Nearly every village in India has its pond which becomes filled with water during the monsoon and grows drier and drier during the winter and hot weather. The pond is usually a natural depression, sometimes enlarged and deepened by human agency. Occasionally a village is situated on the edge of a lake, or jhil, but such fortunate villages are few and far between; the average hamlet has to be content with a small tank. This morning I came upon such a tank, in which the water had become low, leaving a wide margin of mud between it and the artificially made bank. At one end a couple of people were squatting. Mirabile dictu, there was not a paddy bird to be seen, and the only feathered creature disporting itself along the edge was a grey wagtail. In mid pond four domestic ducks were feeding. A tern—the Indian river tern (Sterna seena)—was busy at the tank, flying gracefully over the water and dipping into it every few seconds. Judging from the frequency with which the bird dived, the water must have teemed with food, but there were no signs of fish rising, so that how the eye of the tern was able to penetrate the very muddy water is a mystery. However, the tern did manage to distinguish its quarry, for, although its movements were so rapid that I was not able to discover what it was catching, I could see distinctly that, when rising, it carried something tiny in its bill.

Terns are especially addicted to pieces of water that are rapidly drying up, for under such conditions they find the creatures upon which they prey literally jostling one another. After the water has been run off from a canal, dozens of terns congregate at each hollow in the canal-bed in which water lies.

The tern, when it plunges after its quarry, takes great care not to wet its wings. Its habit is to drop from a height of about twenty feet head foremost. In the course of the plunge the head and body are often submerged, but, I think, never the wings; during the operation, these are held almost vertically. So assiduously was this tern plying his profession that he made thirty dives in about six minutes.

While he was thus employed a pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) appeared on the scene and took up a position on one of three neem trees that grew beside the tank. After sitting thus for a few seconds, he too began to seek for food. Save that both he and the tern drop from a height of about twenty feet into the water after their quarry, there is but little similarity between their movements. The tern sails gracefully along on pinions which move but slowly, while the kingfisher flies a little way, then remains stationary in the air for a few seconds on rapidly vibrating wings, with both tail and bill pointing downwards, so that the shape of the bird is an inverted V with the apex at the neck. It then either dives or passes on to another spot where it again hovers. Frequently it makes as if it were going to dive, then seems to change its mind, for it checks itself during its drop and passes on.

When the kingfisher was hovering in the air, the tern approached and looked as though he were going to attack him. However, he contented himself by skimming past very close to the “pied fish tiger.” This appeared to disconcert the latter, who went back to the neem tree and rested there for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the tern flew away. The moment he had departed the kingfisher renewed his piscatorial efforts and took up a position about twenty feet above the water almost directly over the spot where the ducks were floating. I thought this rather foolish on the part of the kingfisher, because the ducks must necessarily scare away all the fish from that part of the water. However, the little fisherman possessed more sense than I gave him credit for. He had not been hovering for thirty seconds when he plunged into the water and emerged with a large object in his bill. With this he flew to the muddy border of the pond. Then, by means of my field glasses, I saw that his quarry consisted of a frog about two and a half inches long including the legs. The kingfisher experienced some little difficulty in swallowing the frog. He had it crosswise in his beak and the problem that confronted him was to get the frog lengthwise head foremost in his bill without releasing the nimble little amphibian and thus giving it a chance of escape. After a little manœuvring the kingfisher got the frog in the desired position, and, having held it thus for a few seconds, swallowed it.

Then the kingfisher remained squatting on the bank for a couple of minutes looking pensive. This was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that as regards size the frog bore to him the same relation as a large mackerel does to a man. I was interested to see whether the kingfisher would consider this a sufficient meal, or whether he would immediately resume his fishing operations. I expected him to adopt the latter course, for birds have most voracious appetites. If horses were to eat in the same ratio they would require at least a maund of oats per diem to keep them in health! My surmise was correct. In a few seconds the kingfisher flew to a large stake projecting from the water and squatted there, cocking up his tail at frequent intervals. This motion of the tail is possibly an aid to digestion! When he was thus seated, the tern reappeared on the scene and at once recommenced fishing in the manner already described. After the tern had been fishing for a couple of minutes the kingfisher resumed operations and again sought the neighbourhood of the ducks. He soon captured a second frog; but this time, instead of being able to bear it to the bank and devour it in peace, he had to reckon with the tern. He had not risen a yard above the water when the tern noticed that he had quarry. Forthwith the tern committed a breach of the tenth commandment and then proceeded to try to violate the eighth. He made a swoop at the kingfisher, which the latter adroitly dodged, squeaking loudly but without dropping the frog. Then ensued a chase which was a sight for the gods. As regards pace on the wing the kingfisher is no match for the tern. In an aerial contest the slower flier has the advantage of being able to twist and turn more quickly than the rapid flier. Of this advantage the kingfisher availed itself to the full, so that the contest waxed fast and furious, the combatants moving in a series of curves, zigzags, circles, and other geometrical figures.

The kingfisher, notwithstanding that he had just swallowed a frog, evidently had not the least intention of delivering up his catch. The tern appeared equally determined to capture it. Seeing that he would never be able to enjoy the fruits of his prowess while he remained at the tank, the kingfisher changed his tactics and flew right away, disappearing behind some trees, with the tern in pursuit. The latter, however, did not follow far. He seemed suddenly to come to the conclusion that honesty is the best policy, and returned to the pond to endeavour to secure food in a more legitimate manner. I waited on for about half an hour, expecting to see the kingfisher reappear, but was disappointed. Then the tern went to seek pastures new, and left the ducks and a solitary wagtail in possession of the tank.

XXVIII
THE RED TURTLE DOVE

Insects and birds, on account of the vast number of species they present, furnish the best available material for the study of evolution. It is owing to the fact that most Professors of Zoology are neither entomologists nor ornithologists that biological science is in its present deplorably backward condition. There exists scarcely a zoological theory, be it neo-Lamarckian or neo-Darwinian, that the competent ornithologist is not able to refute. For example, writing of sexual dimorphism in animals, Cunningham states that in the case of birds which exhibit such dimorphism the cocks differ essentially in habits from the hens, and in this way he, as a Lamarckian, would account for their external differences. “The cocks of common fowls and of the Phasianidæ generally,” he writes, “are polygamous, fight with each other for the possession of females, and take no part in incubation or care of the young, and they differ from the hens in their enlarged brilliant plumage, spurs on the legs, and combs, wattles, or other excrescences on the head. In the Columbidæ, per contra, the males are not polygamous, but pair for life, the males do not fight, and share equally with the females in parental duties. Corresponding with the contrast of sexual habits is the contrast of sexual dimorphism, which is virtually absent in the Columbidæ.”

Mr. Cunningham evidently is not acquainted with the red turtle dove (Œnopopelia tranqebarica) so common in India, or he would not have asserted that sexual dimorphism is virtually absent in the Columbidæ. The sexes in this species are very different in appearance, and I know of nothing peculiar in its habits to explain this dissimilarity. The sexual dimorphism displayed by the red turtle dove is a fact equally awkward for the Wallaceians, because the habits of this species appear to be in no way different from those of the other doves. I have seen red turtle doves feeding in company with the three other common species of Indian dove; they eat the same kind of food, build the same ramshackle nests, and lay the usual white eggs. But I will not spend time in whipping a dying horse. The poor overburdened beast which we call Natural Selection has done yeoman service; for years he has pulled the great car of Zoology along the rugged road of knowledge, and now that he is past work, now that he stands tugging impotently at the traces, it is time to pension him and replace him by a new steed. Unfortunately, the drivers of the coach happen to be old gentlemen, so old that they fail to perceive that the coach is at a standstill. They believe that they are still travelling along as merrily as they were in Darwin’s time. Ere long their seats will be occupied by new drivers, who will give the good steed Natural Selection a well-earned rest, and replace him by a fresh animal called Mutation. Then once again the coach will resume its journey.

The red turtle dove is a little bird, and the hen looks like an exceptionally small specimen of the ring dove. So great is the resemblance that a hen red turtle dove was shown at the United Provinces Exhibition at Allahabad as a ring dove. The cock red turtle dove has a pretty grey head, a black half-collar running round the back of his neck, which, as Jerdon remarks, is “well set off by whitish above,” while the remainder of his upper plumage is dull brick red. The hen is clothed in greyish brown, in the hue known as dove colour, and her one ornament is a black half-collar similar to that of the cock.

The best friends of turtle doves can scarcely maintain that they have melodious voices. Phil Robinson, writing of the species which visits England, contrasts its note with the “mellow voluptuous cooing of the ring-dove.” “The call of the turtle dove,” he says, “is unamiable, usually grumbling, and often absolutely disagreeable. To the imagination it is a sulky and discontented bird, perpetually finding fault with its English surroundings of foliage, weather, and food. ‘Do, for goodness’ sake get those eggs hatched, my dear, and let us get back to Italy.’ That is the burden of his grumble, morning, noon, and night.”

Phil Robinson’s opinion of the call of the red turtle dove is not on record; this is unfortunate, for, assuredly, it would be a document worthy to be placed side by side with Mr. Lloyd George’s invective against the House of Lords!

To describe the note of the turtle dove as a coo would be to violate the truth. It is a sepulchral grunt, the kind of sound one might expect of a ring dove suffering from an acute sore throat. The only other bird which makes a noise in any way resembling the call of the turtle dove is an owl that makes itself heard in India shortly after the shades of night have fallen. To what species this owl belongs I know not, for it is no easy matter to fix on the owner of a voice heard only after dark, and the descriptions of the cries of the various owls given in ornithological works are anything but illuminating. The owl in question is, I think, the brown fish owl (Ketupa ceylonsis), but of this I am not certain.

The red turtle dove occurs throughout India, but, as in the case of the other species of dove, its distribution appears to be capricious. It is a permanent resident in the United Provinces, and, possibly, in South India, although I am inclined to think that it goes north to breed. Of this I am not sure. It never does to be sure of anything connected with doves; they are most unreliable birds. To give a concrete instance. Having lived for two years at Lahore, and having seen any number of red turtle doves there during the hot weather, but not even the shadow of one in the cold season, I was rash enough to assert in a scientific journal: “There is no doubt that this species is merely a summer visitor to Lahore.” As if to stultify me, some red turtle doves took into their heads to remain on in Lahore during the following winter, and at the end of September, when they ought to have been far away, a pair of them were hatching out eggs. On the 27th of that month Mr. Currie found a nest containing three fresh eggs. The laying of three eggs was an additional piece of effrontery on the part of the lady turtle dove, and she was rewarded by having them captured by Mr. Currie. As every one knows, two is the correct number of eggs for a respectable pair of doves. I have found dozens of doves’ nests, but have never seen more than two eggs in any of them. Two is the normal number for the red turtle dove, but this species has a trick of occasionally laying three, and so would seem to be departing from the traditions of the family in the matter of egg-laying.

As regards architecture, it has not made any advances on the vulgar herd of doves. Its nursery is the typical slight structure over which so many ornithologists have waxed sarcastic—a few slender sticks, or pieces of grass, or both, so loosely and sparsely put together that the eggs can generally be spied from below through the bottom of the nest. Hume states that he has always found the nest at or near the extremities of the lower branches of very large trees, at heights of from eight to fifteen feet from the ground. My experience agrees with Hume’s in that the nests are placed in tall trees, but all those that I have observed have been situated high up in the tree at a level not less than twenty feet above the ground. Mr. Currie states that the nests he found at Lahore in May and June were also in high trees, forty or fifty feet from the ground, but that the nests which he found in August and September of the individuals who elected to winter at Lahore were placed in bushes or low trees, and were not more than twelve feet above the earth, one of them being at an elevation of but four feet.

XXIX
BIRDS IN THE MILLET FIELDS

The fields of bajra, or giant millet, which in late autumn or early winter form so conspicuous a feature of the landscape of Northern India, are a never-failing source of amusement to the naturalist, because they are so attractive to the feathered folk. Were the bird visitors asked why they came to the bajra, they would doubtless reply, if they could speak, that the attraction was the insects harboured by the crops. And the majority would be telling the truth. But there are, alas, some who come for a less useful purpose, that of abstracting the grain. Let us deal first with the avian black sheep. Of these, the buntings are the most numerous, unless the particular field happens to be within a mile of a village; in that case, of course, the sparrows outnumber them. On Passer domesticus I have not leisure to dwell. It must suffice that he eats and twitters and squabbles to his heart’s content all day long, and generally enjoys himself at the expense of the cultivator.

The buntings merit more attention. They are aristocratic connections of the sparrow. They need no introduction to the Englishman, for of their clan is the yellow-hammer, the little bird that sits on a fence and calls cheerily “A little bit of bread and no che-e-e-se.” Like other grain-eating birds, buntings possess a stout bill—not a coarse beak like that of the bullfinch or even of the sparrow, but a powerful, conical, sharply pointed instrument with which they are able to extract grain from the ear and then husk it preparatory to swallowing it. A peculiarity of the bill of the bunting is that the upper and lower mandibles do not come into contact along their whole length, but are separated in the middle by a gap which gives the beak the appearance of having been used to crack grain too hard for it.

Fifteen species of bunting visit India. I am not going to attempt to describe all these, for two excellent reasons. The first is that no one would read my descriptions, and the second is that I have never set eyes upon several of the Indian buntings. Three species, however, are very abundant, and one fairly so, in Northern India, during the cold weather. Buntings are not often seen south of Bombay. As they find plenty of grain in northern latitudes, there is no necessity for them to penetrate into the tropics. The grey-necked, the red-headed and the black-headed are the three commonest species. The grey-necked bunting (Emberiza buchanani) is an ashy-brown bird with a reddish tinge in its lower plumage, and a whitish ring round the eye. It is a bird that is apt to pass unnoticed unless looked for. This perhaps explains why Oates wrongly states that the species is not found east of Etawah. The cock red-headed bunting (E. luteola) is a handsome bird, nor has the hen any reason to be ashamed of her appearance, whatever the ladies of the other species may say. The wings and tail of the cock are greenish brown. His head is a beautiful old-gold colour, while his rump and lower parts are bright yellow. In the hen the colouring is everywhere more subdued. In the cock black-headed bunting (E. melanocephala) the feathers that adorn the head are black with a grey border, so that the head looks grey when the bird first reaches India in the autumn, but grows blacker as the grey edges of the feathers become worn away. The back and shoulders are rich chestnut, the wings and tail are brown, the cheeks and lower plumage rich yellow. The hen is brownish with dull yellow under parts, and a bright yellow patch under the tail. This species, which might at a casual glance be mistaken for a weaver bird (Ploceus baya), is very abundant on the Bombay side, where, to quote “Eha,” it “about takes the place of the yellow-hammer at home, swarming about fields and hedges, and singing with more cheer than music.”

The fourth species of bunting has been promoted to a different genus because it boasts of a conspicuous crest, not unlike that of the crested lark (Galerita cristata). Its scientific name is Melophus melanicterus, and its non-scientific, or popular, or vulgar name is the crested bunting. The cock is a greyish black bird with russet-brown wings. The hen is a dark brown bird. This is said to be a resident species in the plains, whereas the other three are migratory. Otherwise its habits are very like those of the ordinary buntings. These birds spend the day in the fields. As they live in the midst of plenty they enjoy much leisure. This they employ perched on a head of millet making a joyful noise. Sometimes one will be sitting thus on a particular stalk when a friend will fly up, drive him from his position, and in turn hold forth, only to be playfully ousted by another of his comrades. Verily the life of a bunting is a jolly one.

Like rosy starlings, the buntings are not very much in evidence until they begin to collect in huge flocks preparatory to leaving India for the hot weather. Then it is impossible to miss seeing them. At that season golden corn takes the place of millet in the fields. Heavy is the toll which the buntings levy on the ripening grain. When disturbed, they take refuge in the nearest tree, and the moment the fear of danger is past they are back again in the field. Hence Jerdon calls them corn buntings.

The other black sheep of the bajra field are the rosy starlings (Pastor roseus) and the green parrots (Palæornis torquatus). For noisiness and destructiveness these are a pair of species hard to beat.

Having considered the sinners, it now behoves us to turn to the saints. Fortunately for the long-suffering ryot, the latter outnumber the former; the majority of the avian habitués of the millet field come for the sake of the insects which are so abundant in this particular crop. The most conspicuous of these is the Indian roller (Coracias indica), who uses the heads of the millet as convenient perches whence he can descend upon his quarry. It is not by any means every millet stalk that is sufficiently stout to support so weighty a bird, and it is amusing to watch a “blue jay” try in vain to find a perch on several successive heads, on each occasion almost losing his balance. For this reason the roller always selects for his watch-tower a castor-oil plant, when any of these are interspersed among the millet.

King-crows are always in force on the millet field, but is there any spot in India where they are not in force? They, like the roller, use the heads as resting places whence to secure their quarry, but they take it in the air in preference to picking it from off the ground.

On the highest stalk of the field sits a butcher bird, still and grim, waiting for a victim. Though he is small, you cannot fail to notice him on account of his conspicuous white shirt front. As a rule, there are no thorny bushes in the vicinity of the millet field, so that here he must devour his food without spitting it on a thorn.

Every millet field is visited by flocks of mynas—bank, pied, and common mynas—with now and then a starling. These, I believe, visit the field mainly for insects; but I would not like to assert that they do not sometimes pilfer the grain. In any case, they are a cheery crowd, and without them the bajra fields would not be the lively spots they are. Mention must also be made of the Indian bush chat (Pratincola maura)—most unobtrusive of little birds. The hen is dressed in reddish brown, and, when apart from her lord and master, it is scarcely possible to distinguish her from several other lady chats, unless, of course, the observer be so ungallant as to shoot her. The upper parts of the cock are reddish brown in winter, black in summer. There is a large patch of white on each side of the neck. The breast is orange red, the lower parts russet brown. But what with the young cocks assuming gradually the full adult plumage, and the adults changing from the plumage of one season to that of the next, no two of these birds seem to be exactly alike. The bush chats feed upon the small insects that live on the millet plants.

Lastly, mention must be made of various species of pipits and warblers, who feed on insects down in the depths of the millet field.

Such, then, are the principal of the dramatis personæ of the gay little scene that is enacted daily in the millet field. But, stay—I have forgotten a very important class of personages—the birds of prey. In India these are, of course, very numerous, and many of them, more especially the harriers, habitually hunt over open fields, gliding on outstretched wings a few yards above the crops, ready to swoop down upon any creature that has failed to mark their approach. Great is the commotion among the birds in the millet when a harrier appears on the scene. The voices of the smaller birds are suddenly hushed, and their owners drop on to the ground, where they are hidden from view by the crop. The mynas, uttering harsh cries of anger, take to their wings and fly off to right and to left of the path of the harrier, as though they were soldiers performing a manœuvre. Thus the bird of prey flies over a field which is apparently devoid of living creatures. But long before he is out of sight the little birds have again come to the surface, the mynas have returned, and all are feeding as merrily as before. So cautious are the smaller birds that even a dove flying overhead causes them to drop into the depths of the crop. They do not wait to see the nature of the living object—to do so might mean death.

It may perhaps be thought that, if birds are thus in constant fear of being devoured, their life must be fraught with anxiety. Far from it. Birds know not what death is. Instinct teaches them to avoid birds of prey, but they probably enjoy the sudden dash for cover. The smaller fry appear to look upon the raptorial bird in much the same light as children regard the “bogey man.” For some unknown reason, they are afraid of him, but at the same time he affords them a certain amount of amusement.

XXX
HOOPOES AT THE NESTING SEASON

Uk-uk-uk—soft and clear; uk-uk-uk—gentle and monotonous pipes the nodding hoopoe with splendid pertinacity throughout the month of February. This is the prelude to nesting operations. From mid-February till mid-March hoopoes’ eggs to the number of several millions are laid annually in India. During the months of March and April considerably over a million hoopoes emerge from the egg. In Northern India during the month of April it is scarcely possible to find an adult hoopoe who is not employed from sunrise to sunset in digging insects out of the ground with feverish haste and flying with them to the holes in which the youngsters are calling lustily.

But let me begin at the beginning. Ordinarily the Indian hoopoe (Upupa indica) is as sedate and prim as a maiden lady of five-and-fifty summers. At the season of courtship the hoopoes cast aside their primness to some extent. But even at that festive time the cock does not, like the king-crow and the roller, disturb the whole neighbourhood by his noisy love songs. In his wildest moments his voice is never loud.

Sometimes he chases his mate on the wing, and then the pair of lovers perform the most wonderful gyrations, twisting, turning, and doubling with greater rapidity and ease than the most mobile butterfly. The chase over, the birds descend to the ground and remain motionless for a little. Then the cock—it is impossible to distinguish the sexes by outward appearance, but it is the custom to attribute all matrimonial advances to the cock, hence I say the cock—opens out his beautiful cinnamon-and-black corona and runs rapidly along the ground. The lady of his choice pays no attention whatever to his display.

Mark this statement, gentle and ungentle readers! Mark it with a black mark, because it is an example of that horrid heterodoxy of mine which causes the worthy reviewers of a number of influential and highly respectable newspapers to indulge at intervals in much gnashing of teeth and to roar with impotent rage. The orthodox view is, of course, that the lady only pretends that she does not see the display of the cock; in reality she is watching it carefully out of the corner of her eye, and is thoroughly appreciating it. Says she to herself (according to the orthodox view), “My eye! Hasn’t John James got a magnificent crest! But I must not let him know that I think it, otherwise he will suffer from swelled head and be positively unbearable to live with!”

The orthodox would have us believe that the lady hoopoe is a consummate actress. She may be. But, I submit that the burden of proof is on those who make such assertions. If the hen looks as though she is taking no notice, it is proper to assume that she is taking no notice until we can prove that this assumption is incorrect. Now, I submit that it is not possible to adduce one jot or tittle of proof of the hen’s alleged pretence. All the evidence goes to show that the hen bird really does not notice the display of the cock. I ask, why should the hen dissimulate? Why should she show without hesitation her feelings on all occasions that call for a display of feeling except this one?

I ask again, even if the hen does notice the display of the cock, has she any sense of beauty? Is it likely that a bird, which lays its eggs in a dirty dark hole and squats in that hole for a fortnight until it stinketh in such a manner as to be perceptible to the Indian coolie, appreciates the beauty of the corona of the cock or of the bold black-and-white markings on his wings? I decline to attribute to the hen hoopoe all the wiles of a human coquette. But, grant that she does possess them. What of the cock? Is he supposed to see through them? If not, why does he display his beauties to a lady who appears persistently to refuse to notice them? I submit that the orthodox view of the nuptial display is totally wrong. The cock does not try to show off, nor does his display win him a mate. At the breeding season the sight of the hen excites him, and his excitement shows itself in the form of dance, of the erection of certain feathers, or of song. Even as a man’s joy often finds expression in song or dance, so does the pleasure of a bird. A fighting dove often goes through the antics we associate with courtship. These antics are merely the expression of excitement, and not made deliberately to attract a hen or alarm an enemy.

So much for conjecture. Let us now turn to facts. The hoopoe usually lays its eggs in a hole in a tree or a building; on rare occasions only, in a crevice of a rock or under a large stone. The most approved nesting site is a roomy cavity, as dark and dirty as possible, with a very small opening leading to the world without.

I have no wish to exaggerate, and I believe that I am understating facts when I say that I have seen more than fifty hoopoes’ nests.

These have all been in cavities in trees or buildings opening to the exterior by a very small aperture. I think I may safely assert that forty-nine out of every fifty hoopoes’ nests are in such situations. I emphasise this point in order to demonstrate the kind of nonsense that finds its way into English periodicals.

In the issue of the Fortnightly Review for February, 1912, an article by Mr. Philip Oyler appeared entitled “Colour Meanings of some British Birds and Quadrupeds.”

Mr. Oyler is a disciple of that eccentric artist, Mr. Abbot Thayer, who imagines that all birds and beasts are invisible in their natural surroundings.

Mr. Oyler’s article in the Fortnightly Review is composed chiefly of erroneous statements, wild guesses, and absurd interpretations of facts. The climax of nonsense is reached by Mr. Oyler when he writes about the hoopoe:—

“As it nests in hollow stems, and hollow stems mean decay, there is invariably fungus on those stems. And how wonderfully the hoopoe’s white copies them, and how wonderfully the black represents shadows; and then again, in addition to colouration, is a crest to help break the outline.”

For the benefit of those who have not visited India I may state that in the greater part of the plains the trunks of old trees are not covered with fungus. Practically every hoopoe nests in a place completely hidden from the outer world. If the hen hoopoe were coloured with all the colours of the spectrum she would while sitting on her eggs be invisible from the outer world. It is sad to think that people exist who can bring themselves to write such nonsense as Mr. Oyler has inflicted on the readers of the Fortnightly Review.

It is said that a pair of hoopoes uses the same nest year after year. I have not been able to verify this statement owing to the demands on my peripatetic capacity made by the exigencies of the public service.

The eggs of the hoopoe are elongated ovals of a dirty white colour; euphemists describe them as dingy olive-brown or green, while euphuists portray them as having a delicate greyish blue tint. They are devoid of markings.

The clutch is said to contain from four to seven eggs. This is another assertion which I have never attempted to verify, because in order to reach the eggs of the hoopoe one has usually to pull down part of a wall or other edifice and at the same time wreck the nest. However, I can say that I have never observed more than two young hoopoes emerge from a nest, and on several occasions I have noticed that only one issued forth.

As concrete instances are more interesting than generalities I propose in what follows to give an account of the nesting operations of a pair of hoopoes that recently reared up a youngster in a chink in the wall of my verandah at Fyzabad between a wooden rafter and the brickwork. The cavity in question was so situated that I could see its orifice as I sat at my dressing table. I noticed for the first time a hoopoe bringing food to the nest on the 17th March. The food brought appeared to consist chiefly of caterpillars. Whenever the bird arrived at the nest it uttered a soft, pretty, tremulous coo-coo-coo. This was to inform its mate that it had come.

The hen hoopoe is said not to leave the nest from the time she begins to incubate until the young emerge from the eggs. This statement is, I believe, correct. It is not one that can be very easily verified because the sexes are alike in outward appearance. Certain it is that the hen sits very closely and the cock continually brings food to her.

As soon as the young are hatched out the hen leaves the nest and assists the cock in finding food for the baby hoopoes. I cannot say on what day the particular hen whose doings are here recorded left the nest. April 9th was the first date on which I noticed both birds feeding the young. At that period the parents were bringing food faster than the occupant of the nest could dispose of it, and one or other of them had often to wait outside with something in the beak until the nestling was ready to receive it. At that time I had no idea how many young birds were inside the nest. The chink that led to it was too narrow to admit of the insertion of one’s hand. It was not until the young bird emerged that I discovered that only one nestling had been reared.

While the parent was thus waiting outside with a succulent caterpillar hanging from its bill, it used to utter its call uk-uk-uk. Sometimes while one bird was thus waiting the other would appear. Then the first bird would transfer the quarry to its mate, and the latter would either devour it or wait outside the nest with the morsel.

Most birds when they feed their young collect several organisms in the beak between the visits to the nest. Not so the hoopoe; it brings but one thing at a time, which it carries at the extreme tip of the bill. The reasons for this departure from the usual practice are obvious. The long bill of the hoopoe, like that of the snipe, is a probe to penetrate the earth. During this operation any food already in the bill would be torn and damaged. Moreover, if the hoopoe were to carry the food to the nest in the angle of the beak as most birds do, it would be difficult to transfer this to the long bill of the young bird. Hence it comes to pass that hoopoes visit their nestlings a very great number of times in the course of the day.

When young hoopoes emerge from the egg they are silent creatures, but before they are many days old they begin to welcome with squeaks the arrival of the parents with food. The older the young birds grow the more vociferous they become.

Like the majority of birds that nestle in holes, hoopoes with young display but little fear of man. The nest of which I write was situated over the door of the pantry, where servants work during the greater part of the day. The hoopoes did not seem to object at all to the presence of the servants, but they took great exception to my arrival. Whenever I came upon the scene the parent hoopoes used to greet me with a harsh chur uttered with crest folded back and tail expanded.

One day a corby (Corvus macrorhynchus), who doubtless had done to death many a promising nestling, alighted on a table placed in the verandah outside the pantry. The hoopoes were furious at the intrusion. They took up positions, to right and to left of the crow, at a safe distance, and scolded it with great vehemence. The crow took no notice whatever of this hostile demonstration. After a little one of the hoopoes flew to the ground, and from there continued its abuse of the crow. Then, while waiting to regain its breath, it expanded its crest and repeatedly bobbed its head so that the tip of the bill almost touched the ground. This bowing performance is evidently an expression of great excitement. I have seen doves behaving in a similar manner in the midst of a fight, and also when courting. Here, then, we have a case of what is usually considered to be showing off or display to the female, taking place at a time when a bird is very angry. The hoopoe in question was not showing off either to the crow or to its mate; it was assuredly no time, “no matter for his swellings nor his turkey cocks.”

On the 25th April the young hoopoe began to call even when its parents were not at the nest. Each time they brought food it uttered a series of squeaks much like those that emanate from a cycle pump when air is being pumped through it into a nearly fully inflated tyre. By this time the young bird had developed to such an extent that when a parent arrived it would push its head through the aperture of the nest hole.

On the 26th April the young bird left the nest. Assuming that the 17th March was the day when the hen began to sit, we find the young bird emerging from the nest forty days later. It is, however, improbable that I noticed the cock feeding the hen on the very first day of incubation. It is my belief that young hoopoes do not leave the nest for fully a month after they are hatched. When they do leave the nest they differ very little in appearance from the adult. They have the crest and the colouring fully developed. The only difference is that the bill is not quite so long or so curved.

From the time the bird emerges from the nest until the moment when it is gathered unto its fathers, the hoopoe’s plumage does not undergo any change in appearance. This being so I am puzzled to know what a correspondent meant when he recently wrote to the Field about a hoopoe in full breeding plumage that appeared in Yorkshire.

But let us return to the young hoopoe that emerged from the nest in my verandah at Fyzabad on the 26th April, 1912. Not content with thrusting its head and shoulders through the aperture at the visit of its father or mother as it had been doing for some time, it suddenly came right out on to the beam to meet its food-laden parent. After it had eaten the proffered caterpillar and the parent had left, the young bird caught sight of me. Immediately it opened out its crest and began bowing in the manner described above as betokening excitement. Then it fluttered on to a ledge at the distance of six feet. A minute later it flew out of the verandah and alighted on a creeper growing on a wall fifteen yards away. Its flight was wonderfully strong, but I noticed that it was breathing heavily after it had alighted, showing that the short flight entailed considerable exertion. It appeared to dislike the interest I was taking in it, and so flew on to the roof of the bungalow, where I lost sight of it.

These little incidents are, I submit, utterly subversive of the anthropomorphic theory, so much in favour nowadays and expounded by Mr. Walter Long in that much-read book The School of the Woods, that birds and beasts are born with their minds a blank, and that they have to be taught how to walk and how to fly just as human babies are taught how to talk and walk. As a matter of fact, young birds require and receive very little education from their parents. A young bird flies as instinctively as a baby cries.

I saw nothing more of the young hoopoe until the morning of the 28th April, when I noticed a hoopoe on the roof of my bungalow calling uk-uk-uk repeatedly, notwithstanding the fact that it had a caterpillar in its beak. Birds can sing with the mouth full! Presently a young hoopoe appeared on the roof. The adult bird ran to the latter and thrust the caterpillar into its mouth. This was acknowledged by a little squeak of thankfulness.

Most young birds flap their wings and make a great commotion when they think it is time they received a beakful of food. Baby hoopoes, however, do not behave in this way at all. They toddle sedately in the wake of the mother or father, but make no clamour for food. They receive this in a most dignified manner, merely uttering a little squeak of thanks.

To return to the young hoopoe of whose exploits I have been writing. I saw a parent come repeatedly and feed him on the roof of the bungalow on that day and on the 29th and the 30th. This, of course, I was prepared for. But I was not prepared for the next event, which was the revisitation of the nest in the verandah by the two parent birds on the 1st May. On the following days they continued to visit the nest hole, but I had no leisure for watching them. On the 5th May I saw one hoopoe, presumably the cock, literally drive the other into the nest hole. They both flew into the verandah and alighted on a ledge that runs round it a little way below the roof. There the cock emitted some harsh cries, expanded his crest and bowed as described above. Then he advanced towards her. She disappeared into the nest hole. He flew up to the aperture and remained outside on guard for some time. After a little he put his head into the aperture and gave vent to his gentle uk-uk-uk. Then he withdrew his head, remained standing outside the nest aperture for a few minutes and flew off. The hen emerged from the hole a couple of minutes later.

The next day the cock was bringing food to the nest, and the hen was apparently incubating. On the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th I saw the cock still at work feeding the hen, uttering at each visit to the nest a soft coo-coo-coo. From this date I did not see the cock visit the nest again until the 24th, when I saw him fly to the verandah with some food in his mouth, but he emerged from the nest hole without having disposed of the food he was carrying. He then dropped down on to the lawn and gave this to another hoopoe feeding on the grass. From that day onwards I have not seen a hoopoe visit the nest hole in the verandah. It would seem that after sitting on the second batch of eggs a few days the hen hoopoe went on strike! Or, to speak more correctly, the fury of incubation left her, and she regained her normal taste for a life in the open.

XXXI
THE LARGEST BIRD IN INDIA

It has always been a cause of wonder and sorrow to me that the sarus crane (Grus antigone) does not occur in the neighbourhood of Madras, or indeed in South India at all. The tropical portion of the Indian peninsula, with its millions of acres of green paddy, should be a paradise for cranes; yet not one of these fine birds is likely to be found south of the Godavery, or, at any rate, of the Kistna. There is presumably some good reason for this, but that reason has yet to be discovered.

The sarus might well be called the Indian crane, for it is one of the most characteristic and beautiful birds of Northern India; moreover, it appears to be found nowhere outside India. Saruses occur in Burma, but the Burmese birds have fallen into the hands of the ornithological systematist, and he has, of course, made a separate species of them. The sarus from Burma is now known in the scientific world as Grus sharpii—not because very sharp eyes are necessary in order to distinguish him from the Indian form!

The plumage of the sarus is a beautiful shade of grey. The tail feathers are paler than the rest of the plumage, being almost white in some individuals. There is a broad red band round the neck and the lower part of the head. This at the breeding season becomes very brilliant, and then looks like a broad collar of crimson velvet. The legs of the sarus are also bright red and are nearly a yard long. So that the sarus can, when he wishes to assert himself, look over the head of the average human being without unduly stretching his neck.

The sarus is the only crane that stays in India throughout the year. As has already been said, the species is very common in Northern India; indeed, a broad stretch of landscape in that part of the world would not seem true to life did it not contain a pair of saruses standing near together. Every pair of these birds is a regular Darby and Joan. There are instances on record of a sarus having pined away and died because it had lost its mate. This affection of the male and female who pair for life is so notorious that the Indians who eat the flesh of these birds make a point, after they have bagged one of a pair, of killing the mate.

The food of saruses is, as Hume remarks, very varied. No small reptile or amphibian comes amiss to them. They also eat insects and snails, and seeds and green vegetable matter. They are often to be observed feeding at some distance from water. Indeed, my experience is that they are seen more often on dry land than in water. Their long legs appear to be of little use to them except at the nesting season, when they are necessary in order to enable the birds to wade to the nest. Cranes, unlike storks and herons, cannot grip with the foot, so that they never perch in trees. The nest is built on the ground and, presumably for the sake of protection against jackals, wolves, and such-like creatures, is usually surrounded by water. As a rule, it is not constructed on an island, but is itself an islet rising from the bottom of the jhil or tank in which it is situated.

I have not had the good fortune to witness a nest of the sarus in course of construction, but from the behaviour of the owners when heavy rain falls after the nest is completed, I believe that both sexes take part in construction. As the nesting season is in June, July, August, and September, a good deal of rain usually falls while nesting operations are going on. The nest is a mound or cone, composed of rushes and reeds, of which the diameter is two feet at least. The top of this cone, on which the eggs are placed, is usually about a foot above the surface of the water. Thus the eggs lie only a little above the water level; nevertheless, they always feel quite dry, as does the layer of rushes on which they are placed. This is rather surprising—one would expect the water to get soaked up into the parts of the nest above the surface; but this does not happen. It is needless to say that if the top of the nest became submerged it would be impossible to keep the eggs dry; hence, when very heavy rain causes the water level round the nest to rise, the parent saruses raise the top of the nest by adding more material to it.

Two eggs are usually laid. These, as befits the size of the owners, are very large. It is as much as one can do to make both ends meet of a tape eleven inches long, passed round the long axis of the egg. The eggs vary considerably in size, but are usually of a creamy hue, They may be with or without markings. The shell is very thick and hard, so that if sarus’s eggs were used for electioneering purposes, fatalities would often occur.

Various observers give very different accounts of the behaviour of the parent saruses when their nest is attacked. The general experience is that they show no fight, but that they retire gracefully as soon as the human being gets within twenty yards of the nest. Hume, however, records one case of a sitting sarus making such vigorous pokes and drives at the man who approached her when sitting on the nest that he was forced to flap her in the face vigorously with his waist cloth before she left her eggs. That, says Hume, is the nearest approach to a fight for its penates he has ever seen a sarus make. Recently I visited a nest of these birds, which was situated in a small patch of water, perhaps forty feet square, with a millet field on one side and paddy on the other three. I was on horseback, not wishing to wade nearly to my waist. With me were three men. When we first noticed the nest, the hen was sitting on it and the cock standing near by. As we approached the female rose to her feet very slowly, and then I could see that the nest contained a young one. When we were at a distance of some ten yards the female began to move her feet as if scraping the nest, and the young bird betook itself quietly to the water, and swam slowly into the neighbouring flooded paddy field. The hen then slowly descended from the nest into the water and quietly walked off. On reaching the nest, I found in it one egg. I sent one of the men after the youngster, which he quickly secured and brought to me to look at. It was about the size of a small bazaar fowl, and had perhaps been hatched three days. It was covered with soft down. The down on the upper parts was of a rich reddish fawn colour, the back of the neck, a band along the backbone, and a strip on each wing being the places where the colour was most intense; these were almost chestnut in hue. The lower parts were of a cream colour, into which the reddish fawn merged gradually at the sides of the body. The eyes were large and black. The bill was of pink hue and broad at the base where the yellow lining of the mouth showed. The pink of the bill was most pronounced towards the base, fading almost to white at the tip. The legs and feet were pale pink, the toes being slightly webbed. Even at that stage of the youngster’s existence the legs were long, and enabled him to swim with ease, but they were not strong enough to support him when he tried to walk. Sarus cranes cannot walk properly until they are several months old.

While I was handling the young bird the cock sarus was evidently summoning up his courage, for presently he began to advance in battle array, that is to say, with neck bent, so that the head projected forward, mouth slightly open, and wings about half expanded. Thus he slowly approached, looking very handsome. He did not advance direct, but took a circuitous course as if stalking us. When he had approached within about six feet I made a pretence of striking him with a short cane. Of this act of hostility he took not the least notice, but continued to approach. The men with me, who were on foot, began to fear being attacked, so one of them pulled up some paddy stalks and threw these at him. This made him jump and retreat a few paces. But he soon recommenced his advance in battle array. Then one of the men rushed at him. That caused him to retreat a few paces hastily, but with dignity. He then proceeded to attempt a rear attack, and as he circled round us with bent neck he put me in mind of the villain of the melodrama, who stalks about saying “My time will come!” When the sarus had advanced thus to within four feet of my men and looked as though he were about to spring at them, one of these lunged at him with a short stick, and he would have been struck had he not beaten a hasty retreat. Nothing daunted, he again returned to the attack. We were at the nest for fully ten minutes, and the whole time he was trying to get at us. Only once did he utter his trumpet-like call. The female meanwhile remained watching at a distance of perhaps forty yards.

Having seen what we wanted, we replaced the young bird and the egg in the nest and retreated fifteen or twenty yards. We waited to see what the parent birds would do. The female came up to the cock (she is distinguishable by her smaller size); then they both advanced very slowly towards the nest, the hen approaching the faster. When at a distance of perhaps eight yards from the nest, the cock indulged in some curious antics. He slowly drew himself up to his full height and stood thus motionless for a few seconds, then he stretched out his bill towards the sky. Next, the long neck began to bend slowly until it took roughly the shape of the letter S. Then, while the neck was still so bent, the sarus dipped his bill into the water. After this he again stood upright and repeated the whole performance. Finally he indulged in a little dance. Meanwhile the hen slowly advanced, and when within a yard of the nest stood still and contemplated it for a little, then, after caressing the youngster with her bill, she slowly climbed on to the nest. The nest cavity being a very shallow one, the young bird sitting in it could be seen from a considerable distance, and its reddish fawn plumage showed up in strong contrast to its surroundings. The sarus nestling cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called protectively coloured, but it fares very well, notwithstanding its conspicuousness, because its parents never depart far from the nest, and while they are present it is immune from attack. Even large birds of prey avoid the powerful beak of an infuriated crane.

XXXII
THE SWALLOW-PLOVER

Terns are so beautiful that, where they occur, they are apt to attract unto themselves all attention. This is, I think, the reason why so little is on record regarding the swallow-plovers, which haunt all the larger rivers of India to such an extent that it is scarcely possible to spend an hour on the Ganges, the Jumna, the Gogra, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Nerbudda, the Mahanuddy, or even the distant Irawaddy without meeting with a flock of those curious little birds.

Swallow-plovers, or pratincoles, as they are often called, are easily described. They are plovers that subsist largely upon flying insects which they catch when on the wing. As a result of this habit swallow-plovers (Glareola lactea) have taken on some of the attributes of the swallow, notably the long wings and the broad gape.

The total length of a swallow-plover, including the tail, is 6½ inches, while the wing alone is nearly six inches long. It is these long wings that give the bird a swallow-like appearance.

The general hue of Glareola lactea is that curious sandy-grey shade of brown which, for some occult reason, is known as isabelline. The short tail is white with a black tip. There is a black streak through the eye and a white one near the margin of the wing. The abdomen is white. The legs are short for those of a plover; nevertheless, the species is very nimble on its feet, and runs in the manner peculiar to the peewit family.

Swallow-plovers are to be found at a distance from water, but they are essentially river birds.

At sunset, when insects in their myriads disport themselves over the surface of rivers, the swallow-plovers issue forth and hawk these flying hexapods just as swallows do, and, as they fly low over the face of the waters, they are doubtless often mistaken for swallows.

Jerdon states that swallow-plovers live exclusively on insects which they catch on the wing. I doubt whether this assertion is correct. These birds certainly feed largely on flying insects, but as they spend the major part of their time on the sand, over which they run swiftly, I think that creeping things constitute a not inconsiderable portion of their diet.

Their nesting habits are similar to those of terns and plovers; that is to say, the eggs are placed on the sand or bare ground without any semblance of a nest.

I make a point every year, if possible, of spending a morning on a river at the beginning of the hot weather looking for the nests of terns and other birds which lay on churs and sandbanks. Almost every Indian river is plentifully studded with islets which render its navigation difficult, but afford most convenient nesting sites for many species of birds. The sandy islets whereon eggs are laid are nearly always those of which some portion is sufficiently high to escape being flooded when the river rises in consequence of the melting of the snow on the higher peaks of the Himalayas. The selected islands are almost invariably sufficiently far from the river bank to prevent jackals and other predaceous creatures wading across to them. If terns or plovers fail to take such precautions, the chances are that their eggs will come to grief.

This year (1912), on the 15th April, I went out on the Gogra at Fyzabad, and found over thirty nests of swallow-plovers on one islet, on which I also saw two eggs of the black-bellied tern (Sterna melanogaster).

Immediately I set foot on the island the terns and small pratincoles commenced making an uproar, which, of course, amounted to an assurance that they had eggs on the island. One portion of it was well sprinkled with stunted vegetation, and thither I at once repaired, to the great disgust of the swallow-plovers, who flew about excitedly, uttering their lapwing-like cry—titeri, titeri. A search of less than a minute served to reveal a couple of eggs placed on the bare ground between two small plants that were growing out of the sand. As I stooped down to examine these eggs I looked round and saw a very curious and pretty sight. Swallow-plovers were surrounding me. They were nearly all on the ground and striking strange attitudes. Some were lying on the sand as though they had been wounded and fallen to the ground; others were floundering on the ground as if in pain; some were fluttering along with one wing stretched out limply, looking as though it were broken; while others appeared to have both wings injured. I did not count the birds, but at least twenty of them were seemingly injured. I had often seen one bird or a pair behave thus, but never a whole flock.

All the plover family have this injury-feigning instinct, but in none is it so well developed as in the pratincoles.

“The strange antics,” writes Hume, “played by these little birds, at least those of them that had young or hard-set eggs, whenever we approached their treasures were very remarkable; flying past one, they would come fluttering down on to the sand a few paces in front of one, and there gasp and flutter as if mortally wounded, hobbling on with draggled wings and limping legs as one approached them, and altogether simulating entirely helpless and completely crippled birds. No one unacquainted with the habits of this class of birds could have believed, to see them flapping along on the sands on their stomachs, every now and then falling head over heels and lying quite still for an instant, as if altogether exhausted, that this was all a piece of consummate acting intended to divert our attention from their nests.”

Hume here voices the popular opinion that birds, when they behave as though they are injured, are deliberately pretending to be wounded with the object of diverting the attention of an intruder from their eggs or young. I hold this view to be utterly and entirely wrong. Consider the long chain of reasoning that a bird has to make before behaving as swallow-plovers are supposed to do. In the first place the birds must know or believe that the intruder has come with the object of taking their eggs or young ones. They must know or believe that the said intruder would like to capture them in preference to their eggs or young. They must further have discovered that a bird with a leg or a wing broken is easier to capture than one that is sound in limb. They must also know how a bird with a broken wing or leg behaves when endeavouring to escape from a foe. Knowing and believing all these things, the swallow-plover must reason thus within itself: “If I pretend that I am injured the intruder will try to catch me and thus be drawn away from my eggs or young. I will, therefore, proceed to act the wounded bird to the best of my ability.”

I do not for a moment believe that the average swallow-plover has half this knowledge and power of reasoning. Its behaviour can be accounted for in a far more probable manner. We all know that instinct teaches birds to fly away from all birds or beasts of prey or large strange moving objects; but instinct teaches them to guard their eggs. Now, when a human being approaches the eggs of a pratincole, these two instincts come into violent opposition, and the bird’s mental equilibrium is much disturbed; the result is that the bird undergoes all manner of strange contortions. We look at these and say, “What a clever little bird! How well it is acting!” The contortions of the swallow-plover undoubtedly do tend to attract the attention of predaceous creatures, and are probably useful to the species when there are young, for these are able to slip away while the attention of the attacker is momentarily diverted by the parent birds. Hence such behaviour must tend to be perpetuated by natural selection. That it is in no sense an intelligent act is obvious from the fact that such behaviour occurs when there are eggs, and so can do no good; moreover, the parents will go on behaving in this manner even after the intruder has taken the eggs and put them in his pocket!

Textbooks tell us that Glareola lactea lays from two to four eggs. I have never found more than two in a clutch, and think that Hume made a mistake when he said “from two to four,” and as plagiarism is very rife among writers on ornithology, other ornithologists have copied his statements without acknowledgment, and, of course, reproduced his mistake!

The eggs of this species are interesting on account of the extraordinary variations they exhibit. As Hume well says, it is scarcely possible to find two eggs (outside the same clutch) that closely resemble each other. It not infrequently happens that the two eggs in the same clutch differ so greatly that it is difficult to believe that they are the produce of one hen. The ground colour may vary from pale green, almost white, to fawn colour. The markings sometimes take the form of blotches, so that the eggs look like those of a small tern. More usually the markings appear as tiny spots, freckles, pencillings, or cloudy smudges. On a sandbank containing twenty nests it is possible to pick out ten eggs, each of which differs so greatly from the others that the casual observer would certainly say they all belonged to different species. The size is, of course, fairly uniform, but the shape varies greatly; some are elongated, while others are nearly as broad as they are long. Occasionally a pear-shaped egg is found, but as a rule the narrow end of the egg is comparatively blunt. That eggs which are laid on the sand in the open should display these extraordinary variations is an awkward fact for those who consider that the colouring of birds’ eggs is the direct result of natural selection. If this were so we should expect to find a wonderful sameness about the eggs of this species, which are laid in such exposed situations. The fact is, of course, that on a sandbank eggs of any colour that is not too pronounced are difficult to see; hence, for purposes of protection, the actual colours of the background and the markings of the egg are matters of little importance.

XXXIII
THE BIRDS OF A MADRAS GARDEN

Richard Jefferies devotes several chapters of one of the most delightful of his books—Wild Life in a Southern County—to the birds that frequent a farm on the Downs. “On looking back,” he writes, “it appears that the farm-house, garden, orchard, and rickyard at Wick are constantly visited by about thirty-five wild creatures, and, in addition, five others come now and then, making a total of forty. Of these forty, twenty-six are birds, two bats, eight quadrupeds, and four reptiles. This does not include some few additional birds that only come at long intervals, nor those that simply fly overhead or are heard singing at a distance.

“Around the farm-house itself come the starlings, sparrows, swallows, water wagtails, hedge-sparrows, robins, wrens, tomtits, thrushes, and blackbirds. The orchard is frequented by sand martins, cuckoos, missel thrushes, goldfinches, greenfinches, flycatchers, linnets, blackcaps, and titmice.

“In the rickyard are seen redstarts, stone-chats, rooks, chaffinches, wood-pigeons, doves, and larks.”

Now a closer observer of nature than Richard Jefferies never existed, and he knew every square yard of the Wick Farm, so that we may be sure that the list he gives is exhaustive.

This list seems very meagre to one who is accustomed to bird life in India. If the Wick Farm were transported bodily and set down in the middle of India it would be visited by seventy or eighty species of birds instead of twenty-six.

Every garden of tolerable size in Madras is the abode of quite twice as many birds as those which visit a downland farm in England, so superior is India to England as a field for the ornithologist.

Every Madrassi whose bungalow is placed in a garden worthy of the name may, without leaving the same, count upon seeing fifty species of birds before he has been many months in the country.

First there are the perennials—the birds which, like the poor, are always with us—the jungle and the house crows, the white-headed babbler, the iora, the red-vented and the white-browed bulbuls, the king-crow, the tailor bird, the common and the brahmany mynas, the common sparrow, the golden-backed woodpecker, the bush lark, Loten’s and the purple-rumped sunbirds, the coppersmith, the white-breasted kingfisher, the hoopoe, the koel, the crow-pheasant, the spotted owlet, the common and the brahmany kites, the spotted and the little brown doves, and the cattle egret; while if the garden boast of anything in the shape of a pond there will be found the common kingfisher and the paddy bird.

Nearly all these birds nest in the compound, and all are so familiar to every Anglo-Indian that no description is needed. Moreover, I have, I think, previously treated of all of them with the exception of the iora (Aegithina tiphia). In case there be any who are unable to give this beautiful little species a name when they see or hear it, let me briefly describe it. It is considerably smaller than a sparrow, and lives amid the foliage, from which it picks the tiny insects that constitute its food. In summer the upper parts of the cock are black, and the lower parts bright yellow. There are two narrow white bars in the wing. In winter the black on the head and back is replaced by yellowish green. The hen has the upper plumage and tail green, and the lower parts yellow. She also has the two white wing bars. To my mind the iora is a good songster. Nevertheless, “Eha” states that it “has no song, but scarcely any other bird has such a variety of sweet notes.” I will not quarrel over the meaning of the word song; every one who knows the iora must agree that it continually makes a joyful noise.

Less common than the birds named above, but occupants of almost every garden, are the butcher birds and their cousins the wood-shrikes, the fantail flycatchers, and the pied wagtails, the emerald bee-eaters, and parakeets, the robin and the palm swift.

The commonest species of butcher bird in Madras is the bay-backed shrike (Lanius vittatus), a small bird with a grey head and a maroon back, and a broad black streak through the eye. This tyrant of the garden takes up a perch on a bare branch, and there remains like a sentinel on a watch-tower, until it espies an insect on the ground. On to this it swoops, displaying, as it descends, much white in the wings and the tail.

The wood-shrike (Tephrodornis pondiceranus) frequents trees and hedgerows. But for its broad white eyebrow and the white in its tail, it might pass for a sparrow. It is most easily recognised by its melodious and cheerful call—tanti tuia, tanti tuia.

The pied wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis)—elegance personified—loves to sit on the housetop and pour forth a lay which vies with that of the canary. Suddenly away it flies, speeding through the air in undulating flight, until it reaches the ground, where, nimble-footed as Camilla, it chases its insect quarry.

The fantail flycatcher (Rhipidura albifrontata) is another study in black and white. This most charming of birds frequents leafy trees, whence it pours forth its sweet song of six or seven notes. Every now and again it, after the manner of all flycatchers, sallies into the air after insects. Having secured its victim, it alights on a branch or on the ground, and there spreads out its tail and turns as if on a pivot, now to one side, now to the other.

We must seek the robin (Thamnobia fulicata) among the tangled undergrowth in some corner of the compound neglected by the gardener. There shall we find the pair of them—the cock a glossy black bird with a narrow white bar in the wing, the hen arrayed in a gown of reddish brown. In each sex there is a patch of brick-red feathers under the tail, and, as if for the purpose of displaying this, the tail is carried almost erect.

If there be any fruit ripening, even if it be that of the cypress, green parrots (Palaeornis torquatus) are certain to visit the garden. On the approach of a human being these feathered marauders will fling themselves into the air with wild screams, and dash off, looking, as Lockwood Kipling says, like “live emeralds in the sun.”

Even more like living emeralds are the little green bee-eaters (Merops viridis), whose feeble twitter may emanate from any tree. Take a huge emerald and cut it into the shape of a bird. Insert a pale blue turquoise at the throat, rubies for the eyes, and set these off with strips of darkest emery, let into the head a golden topaz, then breathe into this collection of gems the breath of life, and you will have produced a poor imitation of that gem of the feathered world—the little emerald merops.

If there be palm trees in the garden the presence of the little palm swift (Tachornis batassiensis) is assured. Palm swifts are tiny smoky-brown birds which travel unceasingly through the air in pursuit of the insects on which they feed. During flight the wings remain expanded, looking like a bow into the middle of which the slender body is inserted.

I had almost forgotten one of the most striking birds in the world—the Indian paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone paradisi), which certainly is entitled to a place among the common birds of a Madras garden. The cocks are white or chestnut, according to age. The crested head is shining black, and the two median tail feathers are greatly elongated, so that they flutter in the air like satin streamers as the bird flits about among the trees. The hen lacks the lengthened tail feathers, and, as “Eha” says, looks like a chestnut-coloured bulbul. Indeed, Anglo-Indian boys call this species the Shah Bulbul.

There are a number of occasional bird visitors to our Madras gardens. Parties of minivets and cuckoo shrikes come and seek for insects among the leaves of trees. The unobtrusive yellow-throated sparrow (Gymnorhis flavicollis) is another tree-haunting species to be looked for in the garden. Conspicuous among the less common birds which feed on the ground are the gorgeous roller or “blue jay,” the sprightly magpie robin, the white-throated munia, attired like a quaker, and that bird of many colours the Indian pitta, which keeps always near thick underwood, sometimes issuing from thence into the open to give forth a cheery whistle.

In conclusion, mention must be made of the migrant species. Many of the birds that come to the farm on the downs of which Jefferies wrote—the swallows, the cuckoos, and the wagtails—are but summer visitors to England. So do a number of migrating species visit our Madras gardens. There is, however, this difference in the two cases. The migrating species visit England in summer for nesting purposes, whereas they spend the winter in warm Madras, and leave it in summer before the nesting time begins.

Among the winter visitors which come into the garden must be mentioned the beautiful Indian oriole, a study in yellow and black, the Indian redstart, or, to give it its older name, the fire-tail, the grey-headed wagtail, whose under parts are bright yellow, the dull earthy-hued little Sykes’s warbler, which hides itself in a bush and keeps on calling out chick, and the grey-headed myna, which, but for the fact that the head and recumbent crest are grey, might easily pass for a brahmany myna.

The birds above enumerated do not form by any means an exhaustive list. Were birds that sometimes come into the garden included, the list would extend to three times its present length.

XXXIV
SUNBIRDS

Sunbirds, or honey-suckers as they are sometimes called, are to the tropics of the Old World what humming birds are to the warmer portions of the New World.

Sunbirds are tiny feathered exquisites which vary in length from 3½ to 5 inches, including a bill of considerable length for the size of the bird.

They are numbered among the most familiar birds of India, owing to their abundance and their partiality to gardens. They occur all the year round in the warmer parts of the peninsula, but leave the coldest regions for a short time during the winter.

Twenty-nine species of sunbirds are described as belonging to the Indian Empire, but most of them are only local in their distribution. Three species, however, have a considerable range. These are Arachnechthra asiatica, the purple sunbird, which occurs throughout India and Burma, ascending the hills to 5000 feet; A. zeylonica—the purple-rumped sunbird—which is the commonest sunbird in all parts of Southern India except Madras, where the third species, A. lotenia—Loten’s sunbird—is perhaps more abundant.

The genus Arachnechthra is characterised by a great difference in appearance between the sexes. The hens of all the species are very like one another; all are homely-looking birds, dull greenish brown above and pale yellow below. The cocks of the various species are arrayed in metallic colours as resplendent as those that decorate humming birds.

Seen from a little distance, the cock of the purple-rumped species is a bird with dark head, neck, wings, back, and tail, and bright yellow under parts, while the female is brown above and yellowish beneath. Thus at a distance the male does not look much more beautiful than the female, but if one is able to creep up sufficiently near him his plumage is seen to be unsurpassable; it glistens with a splendid metallic sheen, which is purple or green according to the direction from which the sun’s rays fall upon it. On the top of the head is a patch of brilliant shining metallic green, which exceeds in beauty any crown devised by man.

The cocks of the purple and Loten’s species are very much alike, but may be readily distinguished by the fact that the slender curved bill of Loten’s is considerably longer than that of its cousin. How shall I describe these beautiful birds? In my volume Indian Birds I classed them among black birds, because they look black when seen at a distance, but I stated that they are in reality dark purple, and have been taken to task for not classing them among the blue birds. The fact of the matter is that these birds cannot be said to be of any colour; like shot silk, their hue depends upon the angle at which the sun’s rays fall upon them. In the sunlight their plumage glistens like a new silk hat, and sometimes the sheen looks lilac and at others green.

The habits of all three species appear to be exactly alike.

The cocks of all have fine voices. At his best the purple sunbird sings as sweetly as a canary. Indeed, on one occasion when I was staying at Bangalore I heard a bird singing in the verandah which I thought was a caged canary; it was only when I went to look at the canary that I discovered it to be a wild sunbird pouring forth its music from some trellis-work!

Sunbirds are always literally bubbling over with energy. They are bundles of vivacity—ever on the move. Although they eat tiny insects, they subsist chiefly on the nectar of flowers, which appears to be a most stimulating diet.

Sunbirds have long, slender, curved bills and tubular tongues, hence they are admirably equipped to secure the honey hidden away in the calyces of flowers. As the little birds insert their heads into the blossoms they get well dusted with pollen, so that, like bees and some other insects, they probably play an important part in the cross-fertilisation of flowers; but they do not hesitate to probe the sides of large flowers with their sharp bills, and thus secure the honey without bearing pollen to the stigma. It is pretty to watch the sunbirds feeding. They are as acrobatic as titmice and strike the most extraordinary attitudes in their attempts to procure honey. When there is no convenient point d’appui they hover like humming birds, on rapidly vibrating wings, and while so doing explore with their long tongues the recesses of honeyed flowers. To quote Aitken, “between whiles they skip about, slapping their sides with their tiny wings, spreading their tails like fans, and ringing out their cheery refrain. As they pass from one tree to another they traverse the air in a succession of bounds and sportive spirals.” Verily the existence of a sunbird is a happy one!

The nest of the sunbird is one of the most wonderful pieces of architecture in the world, and it is the work of the hen alone. While she is working like a Trojan, her gay young spark of a husband is drinking riotously of nectar! The nest is a hanging one, and is usually suspended from a branch of a bush or a tree, and not infrequently from the rafter of the verandah of an inhabited bungalow; sunbirds show little fear of man.

The nest is commenced by cobwebs being wound round and round the branch from which the nest will hang. Cobweb is the cement most commonly employed by birds. To this pieces of dried grass, slender twigs, fibres, roots, or other material are added and made to adhere by the addition of more cobweb.

The completed nest, which usually hangs in a most conspicuous place, often passes for a small mass of rubbish that has been pitched into a bush, and, in view of the multifarious nature of the material used by the sunbird, there is every excuse for mistaking the nursery for a ball of rubbish. Grasses, fibres, fine roots, tendrils, fragments of bark, moss, lichen, petals or sepals of flowers, in short, anything that looks old and untidy is utilised as building material.

In Birds of the Plains I mentioned the sunbirds’ nest that was literally covered with the white paper shavings that are used to pack tight the biscuits in Huntley and Palmer’s tins.

“It is curious,” writes Mr. R. M. Adam, “how fond these birds are of tacking on pieces of paper and here and there a bright-coloured feather from a paroquet or a roller on the outside of their nests. When in Agra a bird of this species built a nest on a loose piece of thatch laid in my verandah, and on the side of the nest, stuck on like a signboard, was a piece of a torn-up letter with ‘My dear Adam’ on it.”

Mr. R. W. Morgan describes a yet more extraordinary nest that was built by sunbirds in an acacia tree in front of his office at Kurnool: “It was ornamented with bits of blotting-paper, twine, and old service stamps that had been left lying about. The whole structure was most compactly bound together with cobwebs, and had a long string of caterpillar excrement wound round it. This excrement had most probably fallen on to a cobweb and had stuck to it, and the cobweb had afterwards been transported in strips to the nest.”

The completed nest is a pear-shaped structure, with an opening at one side near the top. Over the entrance hole a little porch projects, which serves to keep out the sun and rain when the nest is exposed to them.

The nest is cosily lined with silk cotton. The aperture at the side acts as a window as well as a door; the hen, who alone incubates, sits on her eggs, looking out of the little window with her chin resting comfortably on the sill.

Two eggs only are laid. The smallness of the clutch indicates that there is not a great deal of loss of life in the nest. The immunity of the sunbird is due chiefly to the inaccessibility of the nest. The latter is usually at the extreme tip of a slender branch upon which no bird of any size can obtain a foothold. When a sunbird does make a mistake and place its nest in an unsuitable place, the predaceous crows devour the young ones, as they did recently in the case of a nest built in the middle of an ingadulsis hedge in my compound at Fyzabad.

In conclusion, I should like to settle one disputed point in the economy of the purple sunbird (A. asiatica). Jerdon stated that the cock doffs his gay plumage after the breeding season and assumes a dress like that of the hen except for a purple strip running longitudinally from the chin to the abdomen.

Blanford denied this. He appears to have based his denial on the fact that cocks in full plumage are to be seen at all seasons of the year. There is no month in the year in which I have not seen a cock purple sunbird in nuptial plumage. I used, therefore, to think that Blanford was right and Jerdon wrong.

Afterwards I came across the following passage by Finn in The Birds of Calcutta: “The purple cock apparently thinks his wedding garment too expensive to be worn the whole year round; for after nesting he doffs it, and assumes female plumage, retaining only a purple streak from chin to stomach as a mark of his sex. . . . I well remember one bird which came to the museum compound after breeding to change his plumage; he kept very much to two or three trees, singing, apparently, from one particular twig, and even when in undress he kept up his song.”

Since reading the above I have watched purple sunbirds carefully, and have observed that during the months of November and December cocks in full breeding plumage are very rarely seen, although there is no lack of cocks in the eclipse plumage described by Finn.

Moreover, a purple sunbird which is being kept in an aviary in England assumes eclipse plumage for a short period each year at the beginning of winter. Thus there can be no doubt that the cock of the purple species does doff his gay plumage after the nesting season, but only for a short period. In January the majority of cocks are in breeding plumage, and, indeed, in some parts of the country nest building begins as early as February.

XXXV
THE BANK MYNA

The bank myna (Acridotheres ginginianus), like the Indian corby (Corvus macrorhynchus), is a bird that has suffered neglect at the hands of those who write about the feathered folk. The reason of this neglect is obvious. Even as the house crow (Corvus splendens) overshadows the corby, so does the common myna (Acridotheres tristis) almost eclipse the bank myna. So familiar is the myna that all books on Indian birds deal very fully with him. They discourse at length upon his character and his habits, and then proceed to dismiss the bank myna with the remark that his habits are those of his cousin.

The bank myna is a myna every inch of him. He is a chip of the old block; there is no mistaking him for anything but what he is. So like to his cousin is he that when I first set eyes upon him I took him for a common myna freak. And I still believe I was not greatly mistaken. I submit that the species arose as a mutation from A. tristis.

Once upon a time a pair of common mynas must have had cause to shake their heads gravely over one or more of their youngsters who differed much from the rest of the brood. As these youngsters grew up, the differences became even more marked, they showed themselves slaty grey where they should have been rich brown, and pinkish buff where white feathers ought to have appeared, and the climax must have been reached when these weird youngsters developed crimson patches of skin at the sides of the head, instead of yellow ones. Probably, the other mynas of the locality openly expressed their disapproval of these caricatures of their species, for mynas do not keep their feelings to themselves. As likely as not they put these new-fangled creatures into Coventry, for birds are as conservative as old maids.

Thus these myna freaks were compelled to live apart, but, being strong and healthy, they throve and either paired inter se, or managed to secure mates among their normally dressed fellows. In either case, the offspring bore the stamp of their abnormal parents.

It is a curious fact, and one which throws much light on the process of evolution, that abnormalities have a very strong tendency to perpetuate themselves. Thus was brought into being a new species, and as there were in those times no ornithologists to shoot these freaks, and as they passed with credit the test prescribed by nature, the species has secured a firm footing in India. This hypothesis accounts for the comparatively restricted distribution of the bank myna. It does not occur south of the Narbada and Mahanadi Rivers, but is found all over the plains of Northern India, and ascends some way up the Himalayas. It is particularly abundant in the eastern portion of the United Provinces. In the course of a stroll through the fields at Allahabad, Lucknow, or Fyzabad, one meets with thousands of bank mynas. There seems to be evidence that this species is extending its range both eastwards and westwards; and one of these days a southerly advance may be made, so that eventually the bank myna may form an attractive addition to the birds of Madras.

This species goes about in flocks of varying numbers, after the fashion of the common myna. It comes into towns and villages, but is much less of a garden bird than its familiar cousin. It is in the fields, especially in the vicinity of rivers, that these birds occur most abundantly. They consort with all the other species of myna, for, whatever may have been thought of them when first evolved, they are now in society. King-crows (Dicrurus ater) dance attendance upon them as they do on the common mynas, for the sake of the insects put up by them as they strut through the grass. The king-crow, owing to the length of its tail and the shortness of its legs, is no pedestrian, and so is not able to beat for itself.

The books tell us that bank mynas feed on insects, grain, and fruit. I am inclined to think that their diet is confined almost exclusively to the first of these articles. I speak not as one having authority, for, in order to do this, it is necessary to shoot dozens of the birds and carefully examine the contents of their stomachs. This kind of thing I leave to the economic ornithologist. I admit that bank mynas are very partial to the fields of millet and other tall grain crops, but I am persuaded that they visit these for the insects that lurk on their spikes.

Grasshoppers are to the common myna what bread and meat are to the Englishman, the pièces de résistance of the menu. This is why mynas always affect pasture land, where it exists, and keep company with cattle, the sedate march of which causes so much consternation among the grasshoppers. Bank mynas eat grasshoppers, but seem to prefer other insects, especially those which lurk underground.[3] Certain it is that wherever they occur they maintain a sharp look-out for the ploughman, and follow him most assiduously as he turns up the soil by means of his oxen-drawn plough. The house crows also attend this function. The other species of myna follow the plough, but not so consistently as the bank myna. The pied starling, although it does not disdain the insects cast up by the plough, seems to prefer to pick its food out of mud. One often sees a flock of these birds paddling about in shallow water, as though they were sandpipers.

It is amusing to watch a flock of bank mynas strutting along a newly turned furrow. In Upper India it is usual for two or more ploughs to work together in Indian file, a few yards separating them. The mynas like to place themselves between two ploughs, and so fearless are they that they sometimes allow themselves almost to be trodden on by the team behind them. Although the progress of the ploughing oxen is not rapid, it is too fast for the mynas, who find themselves continually dropping behind, and have every now and again to use their wings to keep pace with them. At intervals, the whole following, or a portion of it, takes to its wings and indulges in a little flight purely for the fun of the thing. The flock sometimes returns to the original plough, at others transfers its attentions to another. Thus the flocks are continually changing in number and personnel, and in this respect are very different from the companies of seven sisters. The latter appear to be definite clubs or societies, the former mere chance collections of individuals, or probably pairs of individuals.

Bank mynas are so called because they invariably nest in sandbanks, in the sides of a well, or some such locality, they themselves excavating the nest hole. Like sand martins, bank mynas breed in considerable companies, but they are not so obliging as regards the season of their nidification. They usually select sites which are not only at a distance from human habitations, but difficult of access, and, as the birds do not begin to nest until well on in May, when the weather in Upper India is too hot to be described in literary language, one does not often have a chance of seeing the birds at work. Their nesting passages do not necessarily run inwards in a straight line. The result is that neighbouring ones often communicate. At the end of the passage is a circular chamber which is lined with grass and anything else portable. Cast-off snake skin is a lining particularly sought after. Mr. Jesse informs us that from one of these nests in the bank of the Goomti, near Lucknow, he extracted parts of a Latin exercise and some arithmetic questions. The owners of the nest were not going in for higher education; it was merely a case of putting a thing to a use for which it was never intended, a feat at which both birds and Indian servants are great adepts. Notwithstanding the fact that the eggs are laid in dark places, they are blue, as are those of the other mynas. Young bank mynas lack the red skin at the side of the head, and are brown in places where the adults are black. Young mynas of all species have a rather mangy appearance. Like port wine, they improve with age.

[3]Since the above was written, C. W. Mason has published a paper entitled The Food of Birds in India. In this he shows that eight stomachs of the bank myna contained 106 insects. His researches show that this species is very partial to the caterpillars of the common castor pest, Ophiusa melicerte. Vide Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture in India (Entomological Series, Vol. III).

XXXVI
THE JACKDAW

The jackdaw, although numbered among the birds of India, has not succeeded in establishing itself in the plains. Large numbers of jackdaws visit the Punjab in winter, where they keep company with the house crows and the rooks, the three species appearing to be on the best of terms. At the first approach of the warm weather the daws, the rooks, and the majority of the ravens betake themselves to Kashmir or to Central Asia, leaving the house crows to represent the genus Corvus in the plains of the Punjab. The jackdaw (Corvus monedula) is in shape and colouring like our friend Corvus splendens, differing only in its smaller size and in having a white iris to the eye. As is the case with the common Indian crow, individual jackdaws differ considerably in the intensity of the greyness of the neck. In some specimens the sides of the neck are nearly white. Of these systematists have made a new species, which they call C. collaris. Oates, I am glad to observe, declines to recognise this species. A jackdaw is a jackdaw all the world over, and it is absurd to try to make him anything else.

As it has not been my good fortune to spend any time in Kashmir, my acquaintance with the jackdaws of India is confined to those that visit the Punjab in winter. These do not appear to frequent the vicinity of houses; I have invariably found them feeding in fields at some distance from a village. They roost, along with the crows and the rooks, in remote parts of the country. Every evening during the half-hour before sunset two great streams of birds pass over Lahore. The larger stream, consisting of crows, rooks, and daws, moves in a north-westerly direction, while the other, composed exclusively of ravens, takes a more westerly course. The ravens apparently decline to consort with their smaller and more frivolous relations.

Although jackdaws seem never to remain in the plains after the beginning of spring, they are able to thrive well enough in the hot weather. A specimen in the Zoological Gardens at Lahore keeps perfectly well, and loses none of his high spirits even when the heat is, to use the words of Kipling, “enough to make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl.” But then, as Bishop Stanley asked, “who ever saw or heard of a moping, melancholy jackdaw?” This particular bird is able to hold his own quite well against the crows, rooks, and ravens confined in the same aviary. Moreover, all these are on quite friendly terms with an Australian piping crow—a butcher bird which apes the manners and appearance of a crow so successfully as to delude the Corvi into thinking that he is one of themselves! Half a century ago Jerdon wrote: “The jackdaw is tolerably abundant in Kashmir and in the Punjab, in the latter country in the cold weather only. It builds in Kashmir in old ruined palaces, holes in rocks, beneath roofs of houses, and also in trees, laying four to six eggs, dotted and spotted with brownish black.” No one living in Kashmir appears to have taken the trouble to amplify this somewhat meagre account of the jackdaw in Asia. It would be interesting to know whether the daws of Kashmir have any habits peculiar to themselves. The fact that Jerdon mentions their breeding in trees is interesting, for in England they nest in buildings in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.

The jackdaw makes a most admirable pet. When taken young it becomes remarkably tame, soon learning to follow its master about like a dog. Moreover, the bird is as full of tricks as is a wagon-load of monkeys, so that Mr. Westell does not exaggerate when he says that the jackdaw when kept as a pet seems more of an imp than a bird. It thieves for the mere sake of thieving. The nest is sometimes a veritable museum of curiosities. One bird, immortalised by Bishop Stanley, appears to have tried to convert its nest into a draper’s shop, for this, although not finished, was found to contain some lace, part of a worsted stocking, a silk handkerchief, a frill, a child’s cap, “besides several other things, but so ragged and worn out that it was impossible to make out what they were.”

XXXVII
FIGHTING IN NATURE

A correspondent to Country Life states that he has noticed that in the various battles between ravens and golden eagles, which frequently take place in the island of Skye, the golden eagles are always defeated.

He enquires whether this phenomenon is a usual one and how it is that the comparatively weak raven can vanquish so powerful a bird as the golden eagle.

The above statement and its attendant queries are the result of faulty observation.

Such a thing as a battle between ravens and golden eagles has probably never happened. If it did take place it could have but one ending—the victory of the golden eagles.

Battles rarely, if ever, occur in nature between different species. In order that a battle may take place it is necessary that each of the opposing species should want the same thing and be ready to fight and, if necessary, to sustain serious injuries in order to obtain that thing.

Now these conditions are rarely fulfilled except at the breeding season, when males of the same species fight for the females.

The only other things over which fighting is likely to arise are food and nesting sites.

It frequently happens that birds of different species want the same food. But this rarely leads to anything in the nature of a battle. In such contests the weaker almost invariably gives way to the stronger without any fighting.

A familiar instance of this is afforded by the behaviour of the white-backed (Pseudogyps bengalensis) and the black vultures (Otogyps calvus) when they gather round a carcase.

Jesse writes, and my experience bears out what he says: “Often I have been watching the vulgar white-backed herd, with a disreputable following of kites and crows, teasing and fighting over a body, when one of these aristocrats (i.e. Otogyps calvus), in his red cap and white waistcoat, has made his appearance. Way is immediately made for him, the plebeian herd slinking back as if ashamed or afraid, and I cannot remember the last comer ever being obliged to assert his authority.”

If the smaller vultures, which are the more numerous, chose to combine, they could drive off the black vultures, but in doing this some of them would run the risk of sustaining injuries. Now, it seems to be a rule in nature that no creature will willingly run such a risk. Rather than do this an animal will flee before a comparatively puny adversary.

The instinct of self-preservation, which includes the preservation of the body from injury, is strongly developed in all organisms. Natural selection tends to develop this instinct, because the individuals in which the instinct is strongly developed are less likely to be injured by fighting than those which are pugnacious. In other words, it does not pay to fight in nature. Injured individuals are seriously handicapped in the struggle for existence. Thus natural selection tends to produce cowards.

At the breeding season an instinct, which is ordinarily dormant in birds, suddenly becomes active—the instinct of preserving the nest and its contents.

This instinct, when aroused, frequently overmasters the instinct of self-preservation, with the result that shy birds become bold, timid ones grow aggressive, little birds which usually are terrified at the close proximity of a human being allow themselves to be handled rather than leave their eggs or young.

At the breeding season the desire to protect the nest leads many birds to attack, or to make as if to attack, all intruders.

No sight is commoner in India than that of a pair of little drongos (Dicrurus ater) chasing a kite or a crow.

Similarly I have witnessed doves chase and put to flight a tree-pie (Dendrocitta rufa), and fantail flycatchers mob a corby (Corvus macrorhynchus).

Nor are such cases confined to India.

In England Mr. A. H. Bryden states that he has seen sea-gulls mob and put to flight so formidable a creature as a peregrine falcon.

In each of the above instances the bird pursued could, if it wished, turn round and rend its puny adversaries. Why does it not do so? Because the instinct of self-preservation is implanted in it so firmly.

This instinct teaches it never to resist an attack, no matter how feeble the attacker be.

The object of the attack, provided it have no nest to defend, has everything to lose and nothing to gain by resisting the attack and giving battle. It matters little to a golden eagle on the look-out for quarry in which direction it flies; hence if, while it is sailing through the air, it is suddenly attacked by a couple of infuriated ravens, the obvious course is for it to change the direction of its flight. If it fail to do this it must either run the risk of being severely pecked by the ravens or fight them and thereby expose itself to injury. Under the circumstances it naturally chooses the line of least resistance.

It is absurd to speak of a bird that behaves in this manner as being defeated in battle. It does not suffer defeat. It merely declines to give battle.

The general rule in nature is, “Never fight when a fight can be avoided.”

This rule is unconsciously followed by all birds, except those that have nests.

The most familiar example of the rule in operation is the well-known habit of birds of surrendering their perches to new-comers. When individual A flies to a perch occupied by individual B the latter almost invariably gives way without demur. The particular perch is of no value to the occupier, but a whole body may be a matter of life or death.

XXXVIII
BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES

Biological science is at present in a rather peculiar position. Biologists are divided into two parties. On the one side stand the theorists and their followers; on the other the practical men who think for themselves. At present, the theorists are the party in power (and they are quite Lloyd-Georgian in their methods), while the practical men, the breeders and the field naturalists, form the opposition. The reason of the division is that many facts, that have come to light lately, do not fit in with the theories that hold the field.

Now, when facts are discovered which militate against a theory the proper course for the holder of the theory is to test carefully the alleged facts, and if they prove to be really facts to discard or modify his theory.

Unfortunately the professional biologists of to-day do not usually follow this course. They have made fetishes of their theories, which they worship as the Israelites worshipped the golden calf. The consequence is that they feel in honour bound either to ignore or to gloss over the facts that are subversive of their fetishes. When they write books in honour of their fetishes, they omit many facts which tend to show that their fetishes are shams. They regard the discussers of the awkward facts as enemies to be crushed. Hence the gulf between the two classes of biologists.

One of the fetishes of the present day is the theory of protective mimicry. Butterflies and moths are the organisms which exemplify best this theory.

It often happens that two species of butterfly occur in the same locality which resemble one another in outward appearance. In such cases zoologists assert that one species mimics the other. They maintain that this mimicry has been brought about by natural selection, because the one species profits by aping its neighbour. The species that is copied is said to be unpalatable. The copy-cat, if I may use the expression, may be either palatable or unpalatable. In either case it is believed to profit by the resemblance. If it is edible the birds that are supposed to prey upon butterflies are said to leave it alone, because they mistake it for its unpalatable neighbour. This resemblance of an edible form to an unpalatable one is called Batesian mimicry.

If the copy-cat be unpalatable it is nevertheless said to profit by the likeness, because young birds are supposed to feed on every kind of butterfly and only to learn by experience which are unpalatable. The theory is that if they attack a red-coloured butterfly and find it nasty to the taste, they leave all red-coloured butterflies alone henceforth. Thus, the imitating species may benefit by the sacrifice of the other red-coloured species. This is known as Mullerian mimicry.

The mimicry theory is very enticing; indeed, it is so enticing that those who hold it, as, for example, Professor Poulton, of Oxford, seem to think that there must be something wrong with the evidence opposed to it.

I assert that it is not the evidence against the theory, but the theory itself that is wrong.

The objections to the hypothesis are many and weighty. Finn and I summarised most of them in The Making of Species.

Two of the objections appear to be insuperable.

The likeness cannot be of much use until it is fairly strong. How, then, is the beginning of the resemblance to be explained?

In order that natural selection should have produced these astounding resemblances, it is necessary that butterflies should be preyed on very largely by birds; but all the evidence goes to show that birds very rarely eat butterflies. In the course of some ten years spent in India I have not seen butterflies chased by birds on more than a dozen occasions. Similarly, Colonel Yerbury, during six years’ observation in India and Ceylon, can record only about six cases of birds capturing, or attempting to capture, butterflies. Colonel C. T. Bingham, in Burma, states that between 1878 and 1891 he on two occasions witnessed the systematic hawking of butterflies by birds, although he observed on other occasions some isolated cases.

Nor is the evidence, as regards India, confined to the experience of the casual observer. Mr. C. W. Mason, when supernumerary entomologist to the Imperial Department of Agriculture for India, conducted a careful enquiry into the food of birds. The enquiry was made at Pusa in Bengal, in the years 1907, 1908, 1909. The results arrived at by Mr. Mason are published in the Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture for India (Entomological Series, Vol. III, January, 1912). As the result of this enquiry, in the course of which the contents of the stomachs of hundreds of Indian birds were examined, Mr. Mason writes (page 338, loc. cit.): “Butterflies do not form any appreciable proportion of the food of any one species of bird, though a good many birds take these insects at times. . . .

“The butterflies include a number of minor pests, of which Melanitis ismene was taken by Merops viridis and Papilio pammon by Acridotheres tristis. Other well-known pests are Pieris brassicae, Virachola isocrates and Papilio demoleus. Belenois mesentina, a Pierid, was seen to be taken on one occasion by the king-crow, and Ilerda sena by Passer domesticus, both of which insects are neutral.

“Moths include many major pests of varied habits—defoliators, miners, cut-worms, grain and fabric pests. The larvae form an inexhaustible supply of insect food to almost all species of insectivorous birds, and even many species of birds that when mature feed almost, if not quite, entirely on grain and seeds are when in the nest fed very largely on caterpillars by the parent birds.”

Obviously, then, in India birds comparatively rarely attack butterflies; but they devour millions of caterpillars. It is the same in other parts of the world.

Mr. G. A. K. Marshall, in the course of five years’ observation in South Africa, recorded eight cases of birds capturing butterflies.

Similarly Mr. Banta points out in various issues of Nature, in 1912, that all the evidence available shows that in North America birds very rarely capture butterflies. Field naturalists scarcely ever witness a butterfly chased by a bird. Of 40,000 stomachs of birds examined very few were found to contain remains of butterflies.

In 1911 the butterflies of the species Eugonia californica were so numerous that “the ground was often blackened with them, and great swarms of them filled the air from morning to evening.” Yet of the birds in the locality where those butterflies were most numerous, only five out of forty-five species were found by direct observation and stomach examination to eat the eugonia, and the only bird that fed off them copiously was the brewer blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus) which is almost omnivorous, and eats insects of all kinds, even if they be what Darwinians call warningly coloured!

Now, modern theorists, as a rule, ignore facts such as these, and this certainly is the wisest course they can pursue, unless they are ready to give up these theories or make themselves look foolish.

However, I am glad to be able to record that Professor Poulton has, as regards the remarks of Mr. Banta, not followed the usual course of the modern theorist.

He has had the courage to take up the cudgels and reply to Mr. Banta in Nature. The reason of this unusual course appears to be that Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton has made some observations in South Africa which Professor Poulton considers are in favour of his pet theory.

According to the Professor, Mr. Swynnerton, as the result of three and a half years’ investigation in South-East Rhodesia, “has obtained the records of nearly 800 attacks made by 35 species of birds belonging to 30 genera and 18 families, upon 79 species of butterflies belonging to 9 families or sub-families.”

Professor Poulton does not seem to see that the researches of Mr. Swynnerton are altogether subversive of the theory of protective mimicry. In order that natural selection may totally change the colouring of a butterfly (as it does according to the theory of protective mimicry), that butterfly must be habitually preyed upon by large numbers of birds, which must be so vigilantly and unceasingly on the look-out for it, that its only chance of escaping from their attacks must be for it to assume a disguise.

Compare with this the state of affairs revealed by Mr. Swynnerton’s observations. He worked for three and a half years, and, as his investigations extended to eighteen families of birds, they must have been very extensive. Exactly how extensive they have been we do not know, because he has not yet published them. Nevertheless, as the result of three and a half years’ watching and stomach examination he has evidence of only “nearly 800” attacks made by birds on insects; that is to say, on an average about two attacks in three days!

Watch a bee-eater feeding and you will see it take twenty or thirty insects in less than an hour. If you were to watch it one whole day you might see it capture 300 insects, but certainly not more than one of its victims, on an average, would be a butterfly. Yet, the theory of mimicry is based upon the assumption that butterflies are so greatly preyed upon by birds that they require special means of protection!

I ask all who are interested in the subject to be ever on the look-out for birds chasing butterflies or moths. These are so large and so easy to identify that there can be no chance of mistaking them. Even a casual observer, when watching a bird, cannot fail to notice the capture of a butterfly by it. And when a bird has captured a butterfly it cannot dispose of it very quickly. According to Mr. Swynnerton, “some (birds) swallow the insect (butterfly or moth) whole, but usually after masticating or beating it; some remove inconvenient portions by ‘worrying’ like a dog or beating against perch or ground; some grasp the prey in one foot and tear off the rejected portions with the bill, eating the rest piecemeal.”

The fact that the average bird has to go through all the above performances before devouring a creature containing so little nourishment as a butterfly, is sufficient to show that it does not pay birds to chase butterflies.

But it is best not to rely on arguments to refute the theories of persons who have no logic in them. The only way to destroy the pernicious zoological theories that hold the field at present is to pile up the facts that tell against them. Similarly, theories that are true cannot be established satisfactorily except by the accumulation of facts. The relations between birds and butterflies can be determined only by observation, and for that kind of observation no country presents a better field than India. Moreover, such observations can be conducted by people having little or no scientific knowledge.

XXXIX
VOICES OF THE NIGHT

The stillness of the Indian night suffers many interruptions.

In the vicinity of a town or village the hours of darkness are rendered hideous by the noises of human beings and of their appendages—the pariah dogs. In the jungle the “friendly silences of the moon” are continually disturbed by the bark of the fox, the yelling of the jackal, or the notes of the numerous birds of the night.

The call of the various nocturnal birds must be familiar to every person who has spent a hot weather in the plains of Northern India and slept night after night beneath the starry heavens. With the calls of the birds all are familiar, but some do not know the names of the originators of these sounds.

First and foremost of the fowls that lift up their voices after the shades of night have fallen are the tiny spotted owlets (Athene brama). Long before the sun has set these quaint little creatures emerge from the holes in which they have spent the day, and treat the neighbours to a “torrent of squeak and chatter and gibberish” which is like nothing else in the world, and which Tickell has attempted to syllabise as “Kucha, kwachee, kwachee, kwachee, kwachee,” uttered as rapidly as the little owlets’ breath will allow of. These noisy punchinellos are most vociferous during moonlit nights, but they are by no means silent in the dark portion of the month.

Almost as abundant as the spotted owlet is another feathered pigmy—the jungle owlet (Glaucidium radiatum). This species, like the last, calls with splendid vigour. Fortunately for the Anglo-Indian its note is comparatively mellow and musical. It is not altogether unlike the noise made by a motor cycle when it is being started, consisting, as it does, of a series of disyllables, low at first with a pause after each, but gradually growing in intensity and succeeding one another more rapidly until the bird seems to have fairly got away, when it pulls up with dramatic abruptness. The best attempt to reduce to writing the call of this bird is that of Tickell: “Turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, tukatu, chatuckatuckatuck.” This owlet calls in the early part of the night and at intervals throughout the period of darkness, and becomes most vociferous just before the approach of “rosy-fingered dawn.”

Very different is the cry of the little scops owl (Scops giu). This bird has none of that Gladstonian flow of eloquence which characterises the spotted and the jungle owlets. His note is, however, more befitting the dignity of an owl. He speaks only in monosyllables, and gives vent to those with great deliberation. He sits on a bough and says “wow” in a soft but decisive manner. When this pronouncement has had time to sink into the ears of his listeners, he repeats “wow,” and continues to sound this impressive monotone at intervals of a minute for several hours.

The above are the three owls which are most often heard in the plains of Northern India. Sometimes all three species, like the orators in Hyde Park, address the world simultaneously from neighbouring trees.

There are numbers of other owls that disturb the stillness of the night with more or less vigour, but it would be tedious, if not impossible, to describe them all. It must suffice to make mention of the low, solemn booming durgoon durgoon, of the huge rock-horned owl (Bubo bengalensis) and the wheezy screech of the barn owl (Strix flammea).

Another call, often heard shortly before dawn, is doubtless usually believed to be that of an owl. This is the deep, whoot, whoot, whoot of the coucal or crow pheasant (Centropus sinensis), that curious chocolate-winged black ground-cuckoo which builds its nest in a dense thicket.

Unfortunately for the peace of mankind the coucal is not the only cuckoo that lifts up its voice in the night. Three species of cuckoo exist in India which are nocturnal as owls, as diurnal as crows, and as noisy as a German band. A couple of hours’ sleep in the hottest part of the day appears to be ample for the needs of these super-birds. From this short slumber they awake, like giants refreshed, to spend the greater portion of the remaining two-and-twenty hours in shrieking at the top of their voices.

Needless to state these three species are the brain-fever bird, the koel, and the Indian cuckoo—a triumvirate that it is impossible to match anywhere else in the world. Some there are who fail to distinguish between these three giants, and who believe that they are but one bird with an infinite variety of notes. This is not so. They are not one bird, but three birds. Let us take them in order of merit.

The brain-fever bird or hawk cuckoo (Hierococcyx varius) is facile princeps. In appearance it is very like a sparrow-hawk, and, but for its voice, it might be mistaken for one. This species has two distinct notes. The first of these is well described by Cunningham as a “highly pitched, trisyllabic cry, repeated many times in ascending semitones until one begins to think, as one sometimes does when a Buddhist is repeating his ordinary formula of prayer, that the performer must surely burst.” But the brain-fever bird never does burst. He seems to know to a scruple how much he may with safety take out of himself. It is not necessary to dilate upon this note. Have we not all listened to the continued screams of “brain-fever, brain-fever, Brain-fever,” until we began to fear for our reason? The other call is in no way inferior in magnitude. It consists of a volley of single descending notes, uttered with consummate ease—facilis descensus—which may or may not, at the option of the performer, be followed by one or more mighty shouts of Brain-fever. There is not an hour in the twenty-four during the hot weather when this fiend does not make himself heard in the parts of the country haunted by him. His range extends from Naini Tal to Tuticorin and from Calcutta to Delhi. Assam, Sind, and the Punjab appear to be the only portions of India free from this cuckoo.

The second of the great triumvirate is the Indian koel (Eudynamis honorata). This noble fowl has three calls, each as powerful as the others.

The first is a crescendo ku-il, ku-il, ku-il, very pleasing to Indian ears, but too powerful for the taste of Westerns. The second is well described by Cunningham as an outrageous torrent of shouts, sounding “kuk, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū,” repeated at brief intervals in tones loud enough to wake the seven sleepers. When the bird thus calls its whole body vibrates with the effort put forth. The third cry is uttered only when the koel is being chased by angry crows, and is, as Cunningham says, a mere cataract of shrill shrieks: “Hekaree, karee.”

For the benefit of those unacquainted with the ways of the koel it is necessary to state that that bird spends much of its time fleeing before the wrath of crows. It lays its eggs in the nests of these. And, if one may judge from their behaviour, they suspect the koel. The other two calls are heard at all hours of the day and night, and it makes no difference to the koel whether it is the sun or the moon, or only the stars that are shining. He is always merry and bright. The second call, however, is usually reserved for the dawn. Hence this particular vocal effort is rendered all the more exasperating, coming as it does precisely at the time when, after the departure of a “sable-vested night” straight from Dante’s Inferno, which has been embellished by the sluggishness of the punkawalla, a certain degree of coolness sets in to give some chance of a little refreshing sleep. Then is it that the jaded dweller in the plains, uttering strange oaths, rushes for his gun and seeks out the disturber of his slumber. In case there be any unable to identify the koel, let it be said that the cock is black from head to foot, that he possesses a wicked-looking red eye, that he is about the size of a crow, but has a slighter body and a longer tail. The hen is speckled black and white. This bird spares not even Sind or the Punjab. It visits every part of the plains of India, wintering in the south and summering in the north.

The third of the triumvirate, the common Indian cuckoo (Cuculus micropterus), although in its way a very fine bird, is not of the same calibre as its confrères. It stands to them in much the same relation as Trinity College, Dublin, does to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It has quite a pleasant note, which Indians represent as Boutotaka, but which is perhaps better rendered by the words “wherefore, therefore,” repeated with musical cadence. It does not call much during the middle of the day. It usually uplifts its voice about two hours before sunset, and continues until the sun has been up for a couple of hours. This cuckoo is very common in the Himalayas and in the plains of India from Fyzabad to Calcutta. Fyzabad ought really to be renamed Cuckooabad. It is the habitation of untold numbers of cuckoos. There during the merry month of May the cuckoos spend the night chanting anthems of which the refrain runs kui-il, ku-il, ku-il, wherefore, therefore, brain-fever, brain-fever, brain-fever. The Indian cuckoo is very like the English cuckoo in appearance, and it victimises the seven sisters (Crateropus canorus) and other babblers, as does the brain-fever bird.

The night-loving cuckoos have demanded so much space that the other vocalists of the hours of darkness will have to be content with very brief notice.

The night heron (Nycticoran griseus) makes the welkin ring with his guttural cries of “waak, waak,” uttered as he flies after nightfall from his roost to the pond where he will fish till morning. As he fishes in silence the addition he makes to the noises of the night is not great. The large family of plovers must be dismissed in a single sentence. They, like many cuckoos, regard sleep as a luxury; hence their plaintive cries are heard both by day and by night. The most familiar of their calls is the “did-he-do-it, pity-to-do-it,” of the red-wattled lapwing (Sarcogrammus indicus). The notes of the rest of his family consist of variations of the words titeri, titeri.

In conclusion, mention must be made of the nightjars or goatsuckers, as they are sometimes called after the fashion of the Romans, who believed that these birds used to sally forth at night and milk goats. This belief was based on two facts. First, the udders of goats were often found to be empty in the morning; secondly, the broad gape possessed by the nightjar. However, the character of these birds has now been cleared. We know that their bills are wide in order to seize large insects on the wing, and that if goats yield no milk in the morning it is not the nightjar who is to blame. Nightjars are brownish grey birds, mottled and barred all over like cuckoos, for which they are often mistaken. Two are common in India. The first of these is Caprimulgus asiaticus, the common Indian nightjar, whose call is heard only after nightfall, and resembles the sound made by a stone skimming over ice. The other nightjar is that of Horsfield (Caprimulgus macrurus). Its note has been compared to the noise made by striking a plank with a hammer. The distribution of nightjars is capricious. They are fairly common in the western districts of the United Provinces.

Horsfield’s nightjar is abundant in the sal forests of the Pilibhit district.