A Bird Calendar for Northern India

by Douglas Dewar

The lesser whistling-teal (Dendrocygna javanica) usually builds its nest in a hollow in a tree. Sometimes it makes use of the deserted nursery of another species, and there are many cases on record of the nest being on the ground, a bund, or a piece of high ground in a jhil. Eight or ten eggs are laid.

The little grebe or dabchick (Podiceps albipennis) is another species that lays in July or August. This bird, which looks like a miniature greyish-brown duck without a tail, must be familiar to Anglo-Indians, since at least one pair are to be seen on almost every pond or tank in Northern India. Although permanent residents in this country, little grebes leave, in the "rains," those tanks that do not afford plenty of cover, and betake themselves to a jhil where vegetation is luxuriant. The nest, like that of other species that build floating cradles, is a tangle of weeds and rushes. When the incubating bird leaves the nest she invariably covers the white eggs with wet weeds, and, as Hume remarks, it is almost impossible to catch the old bird on the nest or to take her so much by surprise as not to allow her time to cover up the eggs. As a matter of fact, these birds spend very little time upon the nest in the day-time. The sun's rays are powerful enough not only to supply the heat necessary for incubation but to bake the eggs. This contretemps, however, is avoided by placing wet weeds on the eggs and by the general moisture of the nest. No better idea of the heat of India during the monsoon can be furnished than that afforded by the case of some cattle-egrets' eggs taken by a friend of the writer's in August, 1913. He found a clutch of four eggs; not having leisure at the time to blow them, he placed them in a bowl on the drawing-room mantelshelf. On the evening of the following day he heard some squeaks, but, thinking that these sounds emanated from a musk-rat or one of the other numerous rent-free tenants of every Indian bungalow, paid little heed to them. When, however, the same sounds were heard some hours later and appeared to emanate from the mantelpiece, he went to the bowl, and, lo and behold, two young egrets had emerged! These were at once fed. They lived for three days and appeared to be in good health, when they suddenly gave up the ghost.

[SEPTEMBER]

	And sweet it is by lonely meres To sit, with heart and soul awake, Where water-lilies lie afloat, Each anchored like a fairy boat Amid some fabled elfin lake: To see the birds flit to and fro Along the dark-green reedy edge.
	MARY HOWITT.

September is a much-abused month. Many people assert that it is the most unpleasant and unhealthy season of the year.

Malarial and muggy though it is, September scarcely merits all the evil epithets that are applied to it. The truth is that, after the torrid days of the hot weather and the humid heat of the rainy season, the European is thoroughly weary of his tropical surroundings, his vitality is at a low ebb, he is languid and irritable, thus he complains bitterly of the climate of September, notwithstanding the fact that it is a distinct improvement on that of the two preceding months.

In the early part of the month the weather differs little from that of July and August. The days are somewhat shorter and the sun's rays somewhat less powerful, in consequence the average temperature is slightly lower. Normally the rains cease in the second half of the month. Then the sky resumes the fleckless blueness which characterises it during the greater part of the year. The blue of the sky is more pure and more intense in September than at other times, except during breaks in the monsoon, because the rain has washed from the atmosphere the myriads of specks of dust that are usually suspended in it.

The cessation of the rains is followed by a period of steamy heat. As the moisture of the air gradually diminishes the temperature rises. But each September day is shorter than the one before it, and, hour by hour, the rays of the sun part with some of their power. Towards the end of the month the nights are cooler than they have been for some time. At sunset the village smoke begins to hang low in a diaphanous cloud—a sure sign of the approaching cold weather. The night dews are heavy. In the morning the blades of grass and the webs of the spiders are bespangled with pearly dewdrops. Cool zephyrs greet the rising sun. At dawn there is, in the last days of the month, a touch of cold in the air.