The swallows which build in the verandah are like old friends, and are always welcome. The curious cry which they make as they wheel in and out of the verandah in the last few minutes before they plunge into bed under the eaves, sounds almost melodious by contrast with the strange noises made by other birds. There is also a species of peewit who utters a rather pretty call, which might be supposed to be the Marathi version of what the English peewit says.
Vultures are as uncanny-looking as they are painted, and to see them waiting on the trees near the erections where Parsees put out their dead to be devoured, is not a pleasant sight. They also sit and watch near the Hindu burning-grounds, which suggests the uncomfortable idea that pickings are to be had there also. The rapidity with which they collect from all parts and swoop down upon the dead carcase of an animal is astonishing to witness. Their value as scavengers is great, and in a very short time nothing is left of the carcase but bare bones.
Crows are also useful as scavengers. Nevertheless, they are a great nuisance, especially in Bombay. Their loud cawing is often most distracting; but they are also bold thieves, and do not hesitate to enter houses when they see their opportunity and to carry off any portable article which comes first to hand, even when it is of no possible use to them. Some of the birds of prey are beautiful objects, on account of their size, and the boldness of their flight. Kites wheel about in the air in large numbers around Poona. Since people carry almost everything upon their heads, a kite not unfrequently makes a sudden swoop and snatches a prize out of the basket.
Few people are allowed a gun license, so that birds are less afraid of mankind than they are in England, and favourable opportunities constantly occur of observing them near at hand. A great variety may be met with in an ordinary country walk in the cultivated parts of India where food is plentiful. Although they cannot sing, many of them have quaint and charming personal characteristics.
CHAPTER XXVIII
INSECTS IN INDIA
Noise of insects at night. Troublesome in the evening. The blister-fly. Bees. Wasps. Cockroaches. Ants in the bungalow. White ants. Scorpions; their sting. Boys callous of the feelings of insects. Bugs. Spiders. Mosquitoes. The mosquito-net. Flies. The eye-fly. Insects resembling their surroundings. Butterflies. The praying mantis.
Amidst the many sounds of the restless Indian night, some far away, some near at hand, there is one which, when it commences, drowns all the rest. It is a harsh, metallic, rasping, shrill, unmusical sound. It might seem as if it had to do with some machinery, except that it is unlike the sound of any machine that you ever heard. It begins in the room where you are sitting reading, or else out in the verandah, where you are enjoying the cooler breeze of evening. Loud as it is, you cannot locate it. At one moment you think it is up aloft amongst the rafters, at another moment it seems to be close by. It emanates from an uninteresting-looking brown insect, about an inch long, who makes prodigious jumps like a grasshopper. One night when this din was so great that conversation was almost impossible, I was astonished to find that the insect was on the table, only a few inches away from my book, and I was able to see his method of making this sound. He was vibrating his horny wing-cases with marvellous rapidity, producing such an amount of noise that, unless one had seen it in process of production, it would have seemed impossible that it could arise from such a humble source.