The beautiful white cattle egrets (Bubulcus coromandus) in a similar way make buffaloes and kine act as their beaters.
The familiar king crow (Dicrurus ater) adopts two methods of insect-catching. The one he favours most is that of the fly-catcher. Sometimes, however, he attaches himself to a flock of mynas. In such cases he flies to the van of the flock and squats on the ground, regardless of the fact that by so doing his beautiful forked tail gets dusty. As the mynas approach, snatching up grasshoppers, they put up a number of flying insects, and these the king crow secures on the wing. As soon as the last of the mynas has passed by the king crow again flies to the van and repeats the performance.
In India almost every company of mynas has its attendant king crow. Usually the two species are on good terms, but sometimes the king crow gets “above himself,” and then there is trouble. The other day I saw a bank myna (Acridotheres fuscus) hop on to a king crow’s back and administer unto him chastisement in the shape of a couple of vigorous pecks on the back of the head. On being released the king crow did not attempt to retaliate, but flew meekly away.
Among the élite of the insect-hunters we must number the swifts. Strange birds are these. Not once in their lives do they set foot upon the ground. For hours at a time they pursue their speedy course through the thin air, snatching up, as they move at full speed, minute insects.
But even their powerful pinions cannot vibrate for ever, so at intervals they betake themselves to the verandah of some bungalow, and there hang on to the wall close under the roof. Their claws are simply hooks, and this is their rest—clinging to a smooth horizontal wall!
So long is the list of insect-hunters, and so varied are their methods, that I am unable to so much as mention many of them. I must content myself, in conclusion, with noticing the tits, cuckoo-shrikes, minivets, and white-eyes, which flit from leaf to leaf, picking up tiny insects; babblers and laughing thrushes, which spend the day rummaging among fallen leaves for insects; nuthatches and tree-creepers, which run up and down tree-trunks on the hunt for insects; and woodpeckers, which seize, by means of their sticky tongue, the insects they have, by a series of vigorous taps, frightened from their hiding-places in the bark.
Consider these, and you cannot but be impressed with the trials and troubles of an insect’s life!
XXXIV
THE ROSY STARLING
Every Anglo-Indian is acquainted with the rose-coloured starling (Pastor roseus), although some may not know what to call it. Nevertheless, it is a bird of many aliases; to wit, the rosy pastor, the tillyer, the cholum bird, the jowaree bird, the mulberry bird, the locust-eater, the golabi maina. The head, neck, breast, wings, and tail are glossy black, while the remainder of the plumage is a pale salmon or faint rose-colour. The older the bird the more rosy it becomes, but the great majority are pale salmon, rather than pink.
Rose-coloured starlings are sociable birds. They go about in large companies, which sometimes number several thousand individuals. They are cold-weather visitors to India, spreading themselves all over the peninsula, being most abundant in the Deccan. In the north straggling flocks occur throughout the winter, but it is in April that they are seen in their thousands, preparatory to leaving the country for breeding purposes. These great gatherings tarry for a short time in Northern India while the mulberries and various grain crops are ripening. They seem to subsist chiefly upon these, whence some of their popular names, and the malice which the farmer bears them. They are undoubtedly a very great scourge to the latter, but they are not an unmixed pest, for they are said to devour locusts with avidity when the opportunity presents itself. Now, the slaying of a locust is a work of merit which ought to neutralise a multitude of sins.