Birds of the Plains

by Douglas Dewar

Green parrots, as the long-tailed paroquets of India are popularly called, although fairly abundant during the cold weather, cannot be said to be common birds in Madras. This is a small mercy, for which all Madrassis should be duly thankful. The green parrot is one of those good things of which it is possible to have too much. Where the beautiful birds are not too plentiful they are always greatly admired and considered most pleasing additions to the landscape; where they abound most people find it difficult to speak of them in parliamentary language.

The Punjab is the happy hunting-ground of green parrots. I am now in a station where these birds probably outnumber the crows, where we are literally steeped in green parrots, where we hear nothing else all day long save their screeches and chuckles.

THE GREY-NECKED CROW. (CORVUS SPLENDENS)

Green parrots owe their unpopularity to their mischievousness and their noisiness. “In their malignant love of destruction and mischief,” writes Colonel Cunningham, “they run crows very hard, and seem only to fall short of that standard through the happy ordinance that their mental development has halted a good way behind that of their rivals. They are, therefore, incapable of devising such manifold and elaborate schemes of mischief as the crows work out, but in so far as intent and disinterested love of evil goes, there is not a pin to choose between them. They take the same heart-whole delight in destruction for destruction’s sake, and find the same bliss in tormenting and annoying other living things.” While fully endorsing the above, I feel constrained to remark that the parrot is no fool; he may not be quite as ’cute as an Indian crow, but he is gifted with sufficient brain-power for all practical purposes. If the green parrot is less harmfully mischievous than the crow he is far more offensively noisy. He is able to produce an almost endless variety of sounds, but unfortunately there is not a single one among them all which by any stretch of the imagination can be called musical.

All species of green parrots have similar habits. All are gregarious and feed almost exclusively on fruit and seeds. They do much damage to the crops, destroying more than they eat, since they have a way of breaking off a head of corn, eating a few grains, and then attacking another head. Where green parrots are plentiful the long-suffering ryot sets them down among the ills to which the flesh is heir. When the crops are cut the parrots feed among the stubble, picking up the fallen grain.

The exceedingly swift, arrow-like flight of the green parrot is too familiar to need description. The flocks usually fly high up, screaming loudly; at times, however, they skim along the ground; occasionally they thread their way among trees, avoiding the branches in the most wonderful manner, considering the pace at which they move.

Very amusing it is to watch a little company of parrots in a tree. Sometimes the birds perch on the topmost branches and there chuckle to one another; at others they cling to the trunk, looking very comic, pressed up against the bark with tails outspread. Not infrequently one sees two of them sitting together in a tree indulging in a little mild flirtation, which, in green parrot communities, takes the form of head tickling. These birds are very skilled climbers; they move along the branches foot over foot, using the beak when they have to negotiate a difficult pass. Thus they clamber about, robbing the tree of its fruit and keeping up a running conversation. Suddenly the flock will take to its wings and fly off, screeching boisterously. The members of each little community seem to live in a state of rowdy good-fellowship. No one who watches parrots in a state of nature can doubt that existence affords them plenty of pleasure.

Green parrots nest in January or February in Southern India, and somewhat later in the North. The courtship of the rose-ringed species is thus described by Captain Hutton: “At the pairing season the female becomes the most affected creature possible, twisting herself into all sorts of ridiculous postures, apparently to attract the notice of her sweetheart, and uttering a low twittering note the while, in the most approved style of flirtation, while her wings are half spread and her head kept rolling from side to side in demi-gyrations; the male sitting quietly by her side, looking on with wonder as if fairly taken aback—and wondering to see her make such a guy of herself. I have watched them during these courtships until I have felt humiliated at seeing how closely the follies of mankind resembled those of the brute creation. The only return the male made to these antics was scratching the top of her head with the point of his beak, and joining his bill to hers in a loving kiss.”

Note that it is the hen that makes the advances. There can be no mistake about this, for the presence of the rose-coloured ring round the neck enables us to distinguish at a glance the cock from the hen.