A Bird Calendar for Northern India

by Douglas Dewar

It would thus seem that the change of season, the approach of winter, has a stimulating influence on king-crows, rollers and hoopoes, causing the energy latent within them suddenly to become active and to manifest itself in the form of song or dance.

In October the pied chat and the wood-shrike frequently make sweet melody. Throughout the month the cock sunbirds sing as lustily and almost as brilliantly as canaries; many of them are beginning to reassume the iridescent purple plumage which they doffed some time ago. From every mango [tope] emanates the cheerful lay of the fantail flycatcher and the lively "Think of me ... Never to be" of the grey-headed flycatcher. Amadavats sing sweet little songs without words as they flit about among the tall grasses.

In the early morning and at eventide, the crow-pheasants give vent to their owl-like hoot, preceded by a curious guttural kok-kok-kok. The young ones, that left the nest some weeks ago, are rapidly losing their barred plumage and are assuming the appearance of the adult. By the middle of November very few immature crow-pheasants are seen.

Migration and moulting are the chief events in the feathered world at the present season. The flood of autumn immigration, which arose as a tiny stream in August, and increased in volume nightly throughout September, becomes, in October, a mighty river on the bosom of which millions of birds are borne.

Day by day the avian population of the [jhils] increases. At the beginning of the month the garganey teal are almost the only migratory ducks to be seen on them. By the first of November brahminy duck, gadwall, common teal, widgeon, shovellers and the various species of pochard abound. With the duck come demoiselle cranes, curlews, storks, and sandpipers of various species. The geese and the pintail ducks, however, do not return to India until November. These are the last of the regular winter visitors to come and the first to go.

The various kinds of birds of prey which began to appear in September continue to arrive throughout the present month.

Grey-headed and red-breasted flycatchers, minivets, bush-chats, rose-finches and swallows pour into the plains from the Himalayas, while from beyond those mountains come redstarts, wagtails, starlings, buntings, blue-throats, quail and snipe. Along with the other migrants come numbers of rooks and jackdaws. These do not venture far into India; they confine themselves to the North-West Frontier Province and the Punjab, where they remain during the greater part of the winter. The exodus, from the above-mentioned Provinces, of the bee-eaters, sunbirds, yellow-throated sparrows, orioles, red turtle-doves and paradise flycatchers is complete by the end of October. The above are by no means the only birds that undergo local migration. The great majority of species probably move about in a methodical manner in the course of the year; a great deal of local migration is overlooked, because the birds that move away from a locality are replaced by others of their kind that come from other places.

During a spell of exceptionally cold weather a great many Himalayan birds are driven by the snow into the plains of India, where they remain for a few days or weeks. Some of these migrants are noticed in the calendar for December.

In October the annual moult of the birds is completed, so that, clothed in their warm new feathers, they are ready for winter some time before it comes. In the case of the redstart, the bush-chat, most of the wagtails, and some other species, the moult completely changes the colouring of the bird. The reason of this is that the edges of the new feathers are not of the same colour as the inner parts. Only the margins show, because the feathers of a bird overlap like slates on a roof, or the scales of a fish. After a time the edges of the new feathers become worn away, and then the differently-hued deeper parts begin to show, so that the bird gradually resumes the appearance it had before the moult. When the redstarts reach India in September most of the cocks are grey birds, because of the grey margins to their feathers; by the middle of April, when they begin to depart, many of them are black, the grey margins of the feathers having completely disappeared; other individuals are still grey because the margins of the feathers are broader or have not worn so much.