The nesting habits of the hornbills are very remarkable. The eggs are deposited in a cavity in a tree. The cavity selected may be the result of decay in the wood, or it may have been hollowed out by a woodpecker or other bird. In either case the hornbill has usually to enlarge the cavity, for, being a big bird, it requires a spacious nest. When all preparations have been made, the female enters the nest hole, and does not emerge until some weeks later, when the eggs have been hatched and the young are ready to fly. Having entered the nest, the hen hornbill proceeds to reduce the size of the orifice by which she gained access to the nest cavity, by plastering it up with her ordure until the aperture is no more than a mere slit, only just large enough to enable her to insert her beak through it. Thus, during the whole period of incubation and brooding she is entirely dependent on the cock for food. And he never leaves her in the lurch. He is most assiduous in his attentions. When he reaches the trunk in which his wife is sitting, he, while clinging to the bark with his claws, taps the trunk with his bill, and thus apprises her of his arrival. She then thrusts her bill through the orifice and receives the food. When at length the young are ready to leave the nest, the mother emerges with her plumage in a much-bedraggled condition.
Why the hen hornbill behaves thus, why she is content to submit periodically to a term of “simple imprisonment,” is one of the unsolved riddles of Nature. This curious habit is peculiar to the hornbills, but seems to be common to every member of the family. In this connection it is interesting to note that the hoopoes, which are nearly related to the hornbills, have somewhat similar nesting habits. The hen hoopoe, although she does not adopt the heroic measure of closing up the entrance to the nest cavity, is said never to leave the nest until the young have emerged from the eggs. No sight is commoner in India than that of a hoopoe carrying food to the aperture of a hole in a tree, or in a building made of mud, in which his spouse is sitting. Another curious feature in the nesting habits of the hornbill does not appear to have been mentioned by any observer, and that is that during the nesting season hornbills go about in threes, and not in pairs. I have noticed this on two occasions, and Mr. Horne, in his interesting account of the nesting of the grey hornbill at Mainpuri, which is recorded in Hume’s Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, mentions the presence of a third hornbill, who “used to hover about, watch proceedings, and sometimes quarrel with her accepted lord, but he never brought food to the female.” Although grey hornbills are by no means uncommon birds, very few nests seem to have been taken. The result is that there are several points regarding their nidification that need elucidation. Those who love the fowls of the air should lose no opportunity of studying the ways of these truly remarkable birds.
XVI
THE FLAMINGO
Ornithologists, as is their wont, have disputed much among themselves as to whether the flamingo is a stork-like duck or a duck-like stork. Indians accept the former view and call the bird the King Goose (Raj Hans); their opinion was shared by Jerdon, who classed the flamingo among the geese. Likewise, Stuart Baker has given flamingos a place among the Indian ducks and their allies.
The flamingo is both wader and swimmer. It has long legs, the better to wade with, and webbed feet admirably adapted to natation. The bird certainly wades by preference. I have never seen it in water sufficiently deep to render swimming necessary or even possible. Those who have been more fortunate state that the swimming movements of the flamingo resemble those of a swan. I doubt whether flamingos ever swim from choice, but the webbed feet are likely to be useful, especially in the case of young birds, when flamingos are swept off their feet by the wind in a violent storm.
Two species of flamingo occur in India. These are known as Phœnicopterus roseus and P. minor, or the common and the lesser flamingo. As the former is the one most often seen in India let us concentrate our attention on it. It is as tall as many a man, and measures over four feet from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail. Of these four feet the greater portion consists of neck, which is very supple; a flamingo when preening its feathers often twists the neck so that it assumes the shape of a figure of eight. The general hue of the bird is white tipped with rosy pink; the wings are crimson and black, hence the appropriate scientific name, Phœnicopterus, wings of flame. The bill is pale pink, tipped with black, while the legs are reddish pink.
Every Anglo-Indian has seen flamingos in the wild state, if not in India, at any rate from the deck of a ship as it crept through the Suez Canal. The shallow lakes and lagoons in the vicinity of the Canal abound with flamingos. These beautiful birds are to be seen in numbers throughout the cold weather in the shallow lakes and backwaters round about Madras. Flamingos are very numerous in Ceylon, where they are known to the Singalese as the “English Soldier Birds” on account of their “crimson tunics” and upright martial bearing.
A flock of flamingos is a fine spectacle. Some years ago I saw near the Pulicat Lake about two hundred of these birds. They were perhaps half a mile from the house-boat. Their white bodies showed up well against a background of blue water. Some of them were feeding with heads underwater, others stood as erect as soldiers at attention and as motionless as statues; a few were moving with great precision, like recruits under training. Portions of the flock were congregated in small groups, apparently in solemn conclave. Dignity and solemnity are the distinguishing features of the flamingo. After watching the flock for fully half an hour I fired a gun. I did not try to kill any of them. They were out of range. I fired because I wanted to see the birds take to their wings, to see them rise like a “glorious exhalation.” The report of the gun seemed to cause no alarm. There was none of that fluster and hurry that most birds display when they hear the sound of firing. The flamingos rose in a stately manner; they did not all leave the water simultaneously. The birds took to their wings by twos and threes, so that it was not until more than a minute after the firing of the gun that all of them were in the air. As their wings opened the colour of the birds changed from white to crimson, the latter being the hue of the lining of their wings. It was as if red limelight had been thrown on to the whole flock.
During flight, the long white neck, that terminates in the pink-and-black bill, is stretched out in front, and the pink legs point behind, so that the neck and legs form one straight line, broken by the crimson wings, which are flapped very slowly. The great birds sailed thus majestically for a few hundred yards and then sank to the water.
When flamingos are about to alight the legs leave the horizontal position assumed during flight and come slowly forward until they touch the water. The whole flock settles without making any splash. It has never been my good fortune to watch the flight of flamingos at very close quarters. I will, therefore, reproduce from the Saturday Review Colonel Willoughby Verner’s description of those he witnessed in Spain: “What a wonderful sight it was! The curious-shaped heads and bulbous beaks at the end of the long, thin, outstretched, and snake-like necks, the small compact bodies, shining white below and rosy pink above, the crimson coverts and glossy black of the quickly moving pinions, and the immensely long legs projecting stiffly behind, ending in the queer-shaped feet. Surely no other bird on God’s earth presents such an incongruous and almost uncanny shape and yet affords such a beautiful spectacle of colour and movement. Onward they sped, now in one long sinuous line; now with some of the birds in the centre or rear increasing their speed and surging up ‘line abreast’ of those in front of them, and again falling back and resuming their posts, ever and anon uttering their weird, trumpeting, goose-like call. They were flying not fifteen feet above the water, and as they passed abreast of me, the moving mass of white, pink, crimson, and black was mirrored in the placid surface of the laguna below them which shone like a sheet of opal in the setting rays of the sun.”