Dame Nature must have been in a very generous mood when she manufactured
golden orioles, or she would never have expended so much of her
colour-box upon them. Orioles are birds which compel our attention, so
brilliant are they; yet the poets who profess to be the high-priests of
Nature give us no songs about these beautiful creatures; at least I know
of no maker of verse, with the exception of Sir Edwin Arnold, who does
more than mention the oriole. Here then is a fine opening for some
twentieth-century bard!
Two orioles, or mango birds as they are sometimes called, are common in
India. They are the Indian oriole (_Oriolus kundoo_) and the black-headed
oriole (_O. melanocephalus_). The Indian oriole is a bird about the size
of a starling. The plumage of the cock is a splendid rich yellow. There
is a black patch over and behind the eye. There is some black on the
tail, and the large wing feathers are also of this colour. The bill is
pink and the eyes red. In the hen the yellow of the back is deeply tinged
with green.
The black-headed oriole may be distinguished by his black head, throat,
and upper breast. The habits of both species are similar in every
respect. The Indian oriole seems to be merely a winter visitor to Madras,
and it is seen in the Punjab only during the hot weather. In the
intervening parts it may be observed all the year round; hence the
species would appear to perform a small annual migration, leaving the
South in the hot weather. In those parts where orioles are found all the
year round it is not improbable that the birds one sees in the winter are
not those that are observed during the summer.
The oriole is essentially a bird of the greenwood tree; if you would see
him you should betake yourself to some well-irrigated orchard. I have
never seen an oriole on the ground; its habits are strictly arboreal, but
it does not seem to be at all particular about taking cover. It perches
by preference on the topmost bough of a tree, and if this bough be devoid
of leaves, so much the better, for the bird enjoys a more extensive view
of the surrounding country. Very beautiful does such a bird look, sitting
outlined against the sky, as the first rays of the morning sun fall upon
and add fresh lustre to its golden plumage. Orioles feed upon both fruit
and insects, and so cannot be regarded as unmixed blessings to the
agriculturalist.
As I have already said, Dame Nature has been exceedingly kind to this
bird; not content with decking him out in brilliantly coloured raiment,
she has endowed him with a voice of which any bird might well be proud.
It is a clear, mellow whistle, which is usually syllabised as _peeho,
peeho_, or _lorio, lorio_; indeed, the name oriole is probably
onomatopoetic. In addition to this the bird has several other notes.
These are not pleasant to the ear and may be described as blends, in
varying proportions, of the harsh call of the king-crow and the _miau_ of
a cat. The hen almost invariably utters such a note when a human being
approaches the nest; but the cry apparently does not always denote alarm,
for I have heard an oriole uttering it when sitting placidly in a tree,
seemingly at peace with all the world; but perhaps that particular bird
may have been indulging in unpleasant day dreams; who knows?
We hear much of the marvellous nests of tailor- and weaver-birds, but
never of that of the oriole. Naturalists, equally with poets, have
neglected this beautiful species. An oriole’s nest is in its way quite as
wonderful as that of the tailor-bird. If a man were ordered to erect a
cradle up in a tree, he would, I imagine, construct it precisely as the
oriole does its nest. This last is a cup-shaped structure slung on to two
or three branches of a tree by means of fibres which are wound first
round one branch, then passed under the nest, and finally wound round
another bough. The nest is therefore, as Hume pointed out, secured to its
supporting branches in much the same way as a prawn net is to its wooden
framework.
In places where there are mulberry trees the oriole shaves off narrow
strips of the thin, pliable bark and uses these to support the nest.
Jerdon describes one wonderful nest, taken by him at Saugor, that was
suspended by a long roll of cloth about three-quarters of an inch wide,
which the bird must have pilfered from some neighbouring verandah. “This
strip,” he states, “was wound round each limb of the fork, then passed
round the nest beneath, fixed to the other limb, and again brought round
the nest to the opposite side; there were four or five of these supports
on either side.” The nest was so securely fixed that it could not have
been removed till the supporting bands had been cut or had rotted away.
Here then is an example of workmanship which the modern jerry-builder
might well emulate.
I have made repeated attempts to see orioles at work on the supports of
the nest, but so far have only managed to observe them lining it. Upon
one occasion I came upon a nest some fifteen feet from the ground from
which hung two strips of fibre about sixteen inches long that had been
wound round one branch. I waited for some time, hoping the birds would
return and allow me to see them finish the adjustment of these fibres;
but unfortunately there was no cover available, and the oriole is an
exceedingly shy bird; it will not do anything to the nest if it knows it
is being watched.
The completed nursery, viewed from below, looks like a ball of dried
grass wedged into the fork of a branch, and may easily be mistaken for
that of a king-crow, but this last is, of course, not bound to the
branches like that of the oriole.
A very curious thing that I have noticed about the Indian oriole’s nest
is that it is always situated either in the same tree as a king-crow’s
nest or in an adjacent tree. I have seen some thirteen or fourteen
orioles’ nests since I first noticed this phenomenon, and have, in every
case, found a king-crow’s nest within ten yards. The drongo builds
earlier, for it is usually feeding its young while the oriole is
incubating. It would therefore appear that it is the oriole which elects
to build near the king-crow. I imagine that it does so for the sake of
protection; it must be a great thing for a timid bird to have a vigorous
policeman all to itself, a policeman who will not allow a big creature to
approach under any pretext whatever.
The oriole lays from two to four white eggs spotted with reddish brown.
These spots readily wash off, and sometimes the colour “runs” and gives
the whole egg a pink hue. Although both sexes take part in the
construction of the nursery, the work of incubation appears to fall
entirely upon the hen. I have never seen a cock oriole sitting on the
nest.