Birds of the Plains

by Douglas Dewar

But let us return to our bulbuls. The habits of both Otocompsa and Molpastes are so similar that we can speak of them together. They are what Mr. Finn calls thoroughly nice birds. They are, none of them, great songsters, but all continually give forth exceedingly cheery notes. The twittering of the red-whiskered bulbuls is not the least of the charms of our southern hill stations.

Bulbuls feed on insects and berries, so are apt to be destructive in gardens. They built nests of the orthodox type—cups of the description always depicted on Christmas cards. These are built anywhere, without much attempt at concealment. Rose bushes are a favourite site, so are crotons, especially if they be in a verandah. A pair of bulbuls once built a nest in my greenhouse at Gonda. Among the fronds of a fern growing in a hanging basket did those unsophisticated birds construct that nest. Every time the fern was watered the sitting bird, nest, and eggs received a shower-bath!

Sometimes bulbuls do by chance construct their nest in a well-concealed spot, but then they invariably “give the show away” by setting up a tremendous cackling whenever a human being happens to pass by.

I have had the opportunity of watching closely the nesting operations of seven pairs of bulbuls; of these only one couple succeeded in raising their brood. The first of these nests was built in a croton plant in a verandah at Fyzabad. One day a lizard passed by and sucked the eggs. The next was the nest at Gonda already mentioned. In spite of the numerous waterings they received, the eggs actually yielded young bulbuls; but these disappeared when about four days old. The mali probably caused them to be gathered unto their fathers. The third nest was situated in a bush outside the drawing-room window of the house in which I spent a month’s leave at Coonoor. This little nursery was so well concealed that I expected the parents would succeed in rearing their young. But one morning I saw on the gravel path near the nest a number of tell-tale feathers. Puss had eaten mamma bulbul for breakfast! The fourth nest—but why should I detail these tragedies? Notwithstanding all their nesting disasters, bulbuls flourish so greatly as to severely shake one’s faith in the doctrine of natural selection.

In conclusion, a word or two must be said concerning bulbuls in captivity. These birds make charming pets, but as their diet is largely insectivorous, they cannot be fed on seed. They become delightfully tame. One I kept used to fly on to my shoulder whenever it saw me, and open its mouth, flutter its wings, and twitter, which was its way of asking to be fed. It would insist on using my pen as a perch, and as one’s handwriting is not improved by an excitable bulbul hopping up and down the penholder, I was obliged to shut the bird up in a cage when I wanted to write. The bulbul used to resent this, and did not hesitate to tell me so. In young birds the tail is very short, and the patch of feathers under it is pale red instead of being bright crimson.

Natives of India keep bulbuls for fighting purposes. These birds are not caged, but are tied to a cloth-covered perch by a long piece of fine twine attached to the leg. Bulbuls, although full of pluck, are not by nature quarrelsome. In order to make them fight they are kept without food for some time. Then two ravenous birds are shown the same piece of food. This, of course, leads to a fight, for a hungry bulbul is an angry bulbul.

THE INDIAN CORBY

I have never been able to discover why the great black crow (Corvus macrorhynchus), so common in India, is called the jungle-crow. It is, indeed, true that the corby is found in the jungle, but it is found everywhere else in most parts of India, and is certainly abundant in villages and towns, being in some places quite as much a house bird as its smaller cousin, the grey-necked crow.

Considering the character of the larger species and its extensive distribution, one hears remarkably little about it. The explanation is, of course, that the house-crow absorbs all the attention that man has to bestow upon the sable-plumaged tribe. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the black crow is merely a mild edition, a feeble imitation of, a scoundrel of lesser calibre than, its smaller cousin, Corvus splendens, and, therefore, everything that applies to the house-crow applies in a lesser degree to the big-billed bird. This is, I submit, a mistaken view, the result of imperfect observation. Corvus macrorhynchus has an individuality of his own, and we do him scant justice in dismissing him with a short paragraph at the foot of a lengthy description of Corvus splendens.

In saying this, I feel that I am speaking as one having authority, and not as the Scribes and Pharisees, whose zoological horizon coincides with the limits of the museum. For a period of eighteen months I lived in a station which should be renamed and called Crowborough. To assert that the place in question swarms with crows is, of course, to assert nothing, for it shares this feature with every other place in India. The point I desire to bring out clearly is that in this particular place the black crows are nearly as numerous as the grey-necked birds. The former are certainly in a minority, but their minority is, like Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s in the previous House of Commons, a large one, and what they lack in numbers they make up in weight and beak-force. It was truly delightful to watch them lord it over the grey-necked birds. Grammarians will observe that I here use the past tense. This is a point of some importance. Just as it is impossible to properly estimate the character of an eminent man during his lifetime, so is it to form a proper opinion of the personality and behaviour of a species of crow while one is in the midst of that species, while one is subjected to the persecutions, the annoyances, and the insults to which it thinks fit to treat one.