At the nesting season the paddy birds awake from their habitual lethargy. Towards the end of June they begin to make a collection of sticks and pile these together on a forked branch high up in some tree. When the pile has reached a magnitude sufficient to support four or five eggs the paddy bird flatters itself that it has built a fine nest and forthwith proceeds to stock it with eggs. This species usually nests in colonies, sometimes in company with night herons (Nycticorax griseus), and occasionally with crows. Seen from below the nursery looks rather like an old crow’s nest. The eggs are a beautiful pale green. They are most jealously watched by the parents; one or other always remaining on guard, and, every now and then, gurgling with delight.
The youngsters hatch out in a comparatively advanced condition. A baby pond heron about a week old is a most amusing object. It has a long, narrow, pinkish beak, quite unlike the broad triangle that does duty for a mouth in passerine birds. Its neck is disproportionately long, while its green legs are many sizes too big for it. Downy feathers are scattered irregularly over the body, and add to the absurdity of its appearance. The eye is bright yellow and gives its possessor a very knowing look.
Most birds when they have young work like slaves to procure sufficient food for them. Not so the paddy bird. He knows a trick worth two of that. He is a past master in the art of loafing. He does not feed his offspring on tiny insects, dozens of which are required to make a decent meal; he forces whole frogs down the elastic gullet of the nestling. Now the most ravenous and greedy young bird cannot negotiate very many frogs per diem; hence the feeding of their young is not a great tax upon paddy birds.
XIX
PADDY BIRDS AT BEDTIME
The paddy bird (Ardeola grayii) is at all times and all seasons as solemn as the proverbial judge; hence at bedtime, when all other birds are hilarious and excited, he is comparatively sedate.
Paddy birds, in common with the great majority of the feathered kind, roost in company. At sunrise, the company separates. Each goes his own way to his favourite river, paddy-field, tank, pond or puddle, as the case may be, and spends the day in morose solitude. At sunset he rejoins his fellow pond herons.
Growing out of the water in a small tank near the railway station at Fyzabad are three trees, one of which is quite small, while the other two are about the size of well-grown apple trees. This description is perhaps as vague as saying of an object that it is as big as a piece of chalk. I am sorry. I cannot help it. I know of no accurate method of judging the size of a tree that is surrounded by dirty, slimy water. On one of these trees, like unto an apple tree, over fifty paddy birds spend the night.
One might have thought that this was a very fair load for an average tree. This, however, is not the opinion of the feathered folk. Some 300 or 400 mynas also utilise this tree as a dormitory. The mynas occupy the higher branches, and the paddy birds the lower ones.
As every one knows, the roosting place of a company of mynas is a perfect pandemonium. For thirty or forty minutes before going to sleep each individual bird shouts at every other individual with truly splendid energy. If man could but devise some means of harnessing this energy, every station in India might be lighted with electric light at a very small cost. As things are, all this energy is dissipated in the form of sound, with the result that the noise made by 300 starlings can be heard at a distance of half a mile.
One might reasonably suppose that a quiet, sedate bird like Ardeola grayii would be greatly disgusted at the din that emanates from the throats of mynas at bedtime, and would refrain from selecting as his dormitory a tree that literally quivers with the shoutings of mynas. It is, however, not so. Birds rarely do what one would expect. I know hundreds of ideal sites for birds’ nests that are never utilised. Per contra, I have met with numbers of nests situated in the most uncomfortable and evil-smelling places. Paddy birds obviously do not suffer from nerves.