It is amusing to watch a flock of bank mynas strutting along a newly turned furrow. In Upper India it is usual for two or more ploughs to work together in Indian file, a few yards separating them. The mynas like to place themselves between two ploughs, and so fearless are they that they sometimes allow themselves almost to be trodden on by the team behind them. Although the progress of the ploughing oxen is not rapid, it is too fast for the mynas, who find themselves continually dropping behind, and have every now and again to use their wings to keep pace with them. At intervals, the whole following, or a portion of it, takes to its wings and indulges in a little flight purely for the fun of the thing. The flock sometimes returns to the original plough, at others transfers its attentions to another. Thus the flocks are continually changing in number and personnel, and in this respect are very different from the companies of seven sisters. The latter appear to be definite clubs or societies, the former mere chance collections of individuals, or probably pairs of individuals.
Bank mynas are so called because they invariably nest in sandbanks, in the sides of a well, or some such locality, they themselves excavating the nest hole. Like sand martins, bank mynas breed in considerable companies, but they are not so obliging as regards the season of their nidification. They usually select sites which are not only at a distance from human habitations, but difficult of access, and, as the birds do not begin to nest until well on in May, when the weather in Upper India is too hot to be described in literary language, one does not often have a chance of seeing the birds at work. Their nesting passages do not necessarily run inwards in a straight line. The result is that neighbouring ones often communicate. At the end of the passage is a circular chamber which is lined with grass and anything else portable. Cast-off snake skin is a lining particularly sought after. Mr. Jesse informs us that from one of these nests in the bank of the Goomti, near Lucknow, he extracted parts of a Latin exercise and some arithmetic questions. The owners of the nest were not going in for higher education; it was merely a case of putting a thing to a use for which it was never intended, a feat at which both birds and Indian servants are great adepts. Notwithstanding the fact that the eggs are laid in dark places, they are blue, as are those of the other mynas. Young bank mynas lack the red skin at the side of the head, and are brown in places where the adults are black. Young mynas of all species have a rather mangy appearance. Like port wine, they improve with age.
[3]Since the above was written, C. W. Mason has published a paper entitled The Food of Birds in India. In this he shows that eight stomachs of the bank myna contained 106 insects. His researches show that this species is very partial to the caterpillars of the common castor pest, Ophiusa melicerte. Vide Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture in India (Entomological Series, Vol. III).
XXXVI
THE JACKDAW
The jackdaw, although numbered among the birds of India, has not succeeded in establishing itself in the plains. Large numbers of jackdaws visit the Punjab in winter, where they keep company with the house crows and the rooks, the three species appearing to be on the best of terms. At the first approach of the warm weather the daws, the rooks, and the majority of the ravens betake themselves to Kashmir or to Central Asia, leaving the house crows to represent the genus Corvus in the plains of the Punjab. The jackdaw (Corvus monedula) is in shape and colouring like our friend Corvus splendens, differing only in its smaller size and in having a white iris to the eye. As is the case with the common Indian crow, individual jackdaws differ considerably in the intensity of the greyness of the neck. In some specimens the sides of the neck are nearly white. Of these systematists have made a new species, which they call C. collaris. Oates, I am glad to observe, declines to recognise this species. A jackdaw is a jackdaw all the world over, and it is absurd to try to make him anything else.
As it has not been my good fortune to spend any time in Kashmir, my acquaintance with the jackdaws of India is confined to those that visit the Punjab in winter. These do not appear to frequent the vicinity of houses; I have invariably found them feeding in fields at some distance from a village. They roost, along with the crows and the rooks, in remote parts of the country. Every evening during the half-hour before sunset two great streams of birds pass over Lahore. The larger stream, consisting of crows, rooks, and daws, moves in a north-westerly direction, while the other, composed exclusively of ravens, takes a more westerly course. The ravens apparently decline to consort with their smaller and more frivolous relations.
Although jackdaws seem never to remain in the plains after the beginning of spring, they are able to thrive well enough in the hot weather. A specimen in the Zoological Gardens at Lahore keeps perfectly well, and loses none of his high spirits even when the heat is, to use the words of Kipling, “enough to make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl.” But then, as Bishop Stanley asked, “who ever saw or heard of a moping, melancholy jackdaw?” This particular bird is able to hold his own quite well against the crows, rooks, and ravens confined in the same aviary. Moreover, all these are on quite friendly terms with an Australian piping crow—a butcher bird which apes the manners and appearance of a crow so successfully as to delude the Corvi into thinking that he is one of themselves! Half a century ago Jerdon wrote: “The jackdaw is tolerably abundant in Kashmir and in the Punjab, in the latter country in the cold weather only. It builds in Kashmir in old ruined palaces, holes in rocks, beneath roofs of houses, and also in trees, laying four to six eggs, dotted and spotted with brownish black.” No one living in Kashmir appears to have taken the trouble to amplify this somewhat meagre account of the jackdaw in Asia. It would be interesting to know whether the daws of Kashmir have any habits peculiar to themselves. The fact that Jerdon mentions their breeding in trees is interesting, for in England they nest in buildings in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand.
The jackdaw makes a most admirable pet. When taken young it becomes remarkably tame, soon learning to follow its master about like a dog. Moreover, the bird is as full of tricks as is a wagon-load of monkeys, so that Mr. Westell does not exaggerate when he says that the jackdaw when kept as a pet seems more of an imp than a bird. It thieves for the mere sake of thieving. The nest is sometimes a veritable museum of curiosities. One bird, immortalised by Bishop Stanley, appears to have tried to convert its nest into a draper’s shop, for this, although not finished, was found to contain some lace, part of a worsted stocking, a silk handkerchief, a frill, a child’s cap, “besides several other things, but so ragged and worn out that it was impossible to make out what they were.”
XXXVII
FIGHTING IN NATURE
A correspondent to Country Life states that he has noticed that in the various battles between ravens and golden eagles, which frequently take place in the island of Skye, the golden eagles are always defeated.