The handsome, but destructive, green parrots are now seeking, or making, cavities in trees or buildings in which to deposit their white eggs.
The breeding season for the alexandrine (Palaeornis eupatrius) and the rose-ringed paroquet (P. torquatus) begins at the end of January or early in February. March is the month in which most eggs are taken.
In April and May the bird-catchers go round and collect the nestlings in order to sell them at four annas apiece. Green parrots are the most popular cage birds in India. Destructive though they be and a scourge to the husbandman, one cannot but pity the luckless captives doomed to spend practically the whole of their existence in small iron cages, which, when exposed to the sun in the hot weather, as they often are, must be veritable infernos.
The courtship of a pair of green parrots is as amusing to watch as that of any 'Arry and 'Arriet. Not possessing hats the amorous birds are unable to exchange them, but otherwise their actions are quite coster-like. The female twists herself into all manner of ridiculous postures and utters low twittering notes. The cock sits at her side and admires. Every now and then he shows his appreciation of her antics by tickling her head with his beak or by joining his bill to hers.
Both the grey shrike and the wood-shrike begin nesting operations in February. As, however, most of their nests are likely to be found later in the year they are dealt with in the calendar for March.
[MARCH]
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And all the jungle laughed with nesting songs, And all the thickets rustled with small life Of lizard, bee, beetle, and creeping things Pleased at the spring time. In the mango sprays The sun-birds flashed; alone at his green forge Toiled the loud coppersmith; . . . | ||
| ARNOLD. The Light of Asia. |