Most species of myna breed early in the hot weather, but the pied mynas invariably wait until the first rain has fallen before they set about the work of nest-building. Colonel Cunningham suggests that the reason for this peculiarity of the pied starling is that, as it does not nestle in a hole but builds in a tree, it requires the green leaves coaxed forth by the rain as a protection to its nest. If the nursery of the pied myna were a neatly constructed cup, something might be said for this idea, but no amount of foliage could hide from view the huge mass of straw and rubbish that does duty for the nest of this species. Pied mynas rely on their pugnacity, and not on concealment, for the protection of the nest. A list of the various materials utilised by nesting Sturnopastors would include almost every inanimate object which is both portable and pliable; feathers, rags, twigs, moss, grass, leaves, paper, bits of string, rope and cotton, hay and portions of skin cast off by snakes, are the materials most commonly employed. The nest is not, as a rule, placed very high up. Sometimes it is situated in quite a low tree. Once when visiting the gaol at Gonda in the rains I observed a pair of pied mynas nesting in a solitary tree which grew in one of the courtyards inside the gaol walls. Like most of its kind, the pied starling displays little fear of man. The eggs of this species are a beautiful pale blue. Blue is the hue of the eggs of all species of myna. The fact that, notwithstanding its open nest, the eggs of the pied myna do not differ in colour from those of its brethren which nestle in holes, is one of the facts that the field naturalist comes across daily which demonstrate how hopelessly wrong is the Wallaceian view of the meaning of the colours of birds’ eggs.
XXXVI
A BIRD OF THE OPEN PLAIN
It is the fashion for modern writers of books on ornithology to divide birds according to the localities they frequent, into birds of the garden, birds of the wood, birds of the meadow, birds of the waterside, etc. The chief drawback to such a system of classification, which is intended to simplify identification, is that most birds decline to limit themselves to any particular locality.
There are, however, some species which are so constant in their habits as to render it possible to lay down the law regarding them and to assert with confidence where they will be found. Of such are the finch-larks. I have never seen a finch-lark anywhere but on an open uncultivated plain or in fields that happen to be devoid of crops.
Any person living in India may be tolerably certain of making the acquaintance of the ashy-crowned finch-lark (Pyrrhulauda grisea) by repairing to the nearest open space outside municipal limits.
The finch-lark is a dumpy, short-tailed bird, considerably smaller than a sparrow. Having no bright colours in its plumage, it is not much to look at, but it makes up by its powers of flight for that which it lacks in form and colour.
The finch-larks found in India fall into two genera, each of which is composed of two species.
The commonest species is that mentioned above—the ashy-crowned or, as Jerdon calls it, the black-bellied finch-lark.
In the genus Pyrrhulauda the sexes differ much in appearance, while in the allied genus, Ammomanes, the cock is indistinguishable from the hen.
As the habits of these two genera are alike in all respects, they afford an instance of the futility of attempting, as some do, to account for the phenomenon of sexual dimorphism by alleging that the habits of the dimorphic species differ from those of the monomorphic species. When species A lives in the same locality as species B, nests at the same season, builds the same kind of nest, and when both feed and fly in the same manner, it should be obvious to every person not obsessed by a pet theory that natural selection cannot have had much to do with the fact that, whereas in species A the sexes are alike, in species B they differ. But, as we shall see, finch-larks would almost seem to have been created expressly to upset present-day zoological theories.