Cowper sang of—

“Kites that swim sublime

In the still repeated circles, screaming loud.”

These words are equally appropriate to the kites of the sea.

I have watched, until my eyes grew tired, kites floating in circles in

the thin atmosphere, with scarce a movement of the pinions; I have seen

gulls keeping pace with a steamer without as much as a quiver of their

wings. In each case the wind was the motive power.

Both kites and gulls fly with downwardly directed eyes. Their life is one

long search for food. So keen is their vision that no object seems minute

enough to escape their notice. The smallest piece of bread thrown from a

moving ship is immediately pounced upon by the “wild sea-birds that

follow through the air,” but no notice appears to be taken of a piece of

paper rolled up into a ball.

Gulls, like kites, are omnivorous. Some species occasionally prey upon

fish which they catch alive; this method of obtaining food is, however,

the exception rather than the rule among gulls. They are sea-birds merely

in the sense that they usually pick their food off water. They are found

only where there is refuse to be picked up. In those parts of the ocean

that are not frequented by ships gulls are conspicuous by their absence.

They do not, as a rule, travel very far from land; when they do venture

out to sea, it is invariably in the wake of some great ship. Every ocean

liner sheds edible objects all along its course, and so attracts numbers

of gulls. These follow the ship for perhaps two hundred miles, and then

forsake it to return with some homeward-bound vessel.

The seashore and the estuaries of tidal rivers are the favourite

hunting-grounds of the sea-gulls, the flotsam of the rivers and the

jetsam of the waves being the attractions. Numbers of the graceful birds

await the return of the fishing smacks, in order to secure the fish

thrown away by the fishermen. The marine kites are not always content to

wait for rejected fish; not infrequently they boldly help themselves to

some of the shining contents of the nets, and sometimes actually tear the

meshes with their strong sharp bills. In India there is always much

fighting between the gulls and the crows over the fish cast away by the

fishers. The antagonists are well matched. Similar contests have been

recorded in the British Isles. I cull from _The Evening Telegraph_ the

following description of a fight between gulls and rooks over ground

covered with worms which had been killed by a salt-water flood:

“Thousands of gulls and rooks fought each other with a determination and

venom that could not be appreciated unless witnessed. Feathers flew in

all directions; the cawing and screaming were almost deafening. It was a

genuine fight. At first it took place in mid-air, but soon the combatants

came to the ground, and then the struggle centred in and around a fairly

large hillock. Just as the gulls appeared to be gaining the upper hand,

the report of a gun broke up the fight.”

The diet of the kites of the sea is not confined to small things. “A son

of the marshes” states that he has seen them feeding with hooded crows on

the carcases of moorland sheep. In the British Isles gulls frequently

follow the plough and greedily seize the worms and grubs turned up in the

furrow. In London and Dublin, and probably in other places, gulls have

taken up their residence in the parks, where they feed largely on the

bread thrown to the ornamental water-fowl, seizing it in the air before

it reaches the ducks. So tame do these gulls become that they will almost

take bread from the hands of children. Many people labour under the

delusion that these gulls are domesticated ones kept by the authorities

along with the ducks and swans.

Of late years a large colony of gulls has established itself on the

Thames opposite the Temple. These now form one of the sights of London.

The townsfolk take so much interest in the graceful birds that some

individuals earn a living by selling on the Embankment small baskets of

little fish which passers-by purchase in order to throw to the screaming

gulls that hover around expectantly.

Even as hunger frequently drives kites to commit larceny in the farmyard,

so does it sometimes turn sea-gulls into birds of prey.

Mr. W. J. Williams gives an account, in _The Irish Naturalist_, of a

lesser black-headed gull that used to frequent the lake in St. Stephen’s

Green Park. It was wont to rest on the cornice of a house overlooking the

park, till an opportunity presented itself of swooping down and snatching

a duckling. It became so expert at this form of poaching that the Board

of Works had the marauder executed. Another gull which attacked a

duckling was in turn attacked by the parents (a pair of Chilian wigeons),

with such success that the exhausted gull was killed with a stick by one

of the Park constables.

In India gulls do not, I think, venture far inland. The terns regard the

inland waters of Hindustan as their preserve. Some people eat gulls. The

late Lord Lilford declared that the black-headed species is a good bird

for the table. I am not prepared to deny this assertion. I shall not put

it to the test, for, in my opinion, gulls should be a feast only for the

eyes.

XX

RIVER TERNS

A sojourn of a few years in Upper India usually teaches a European to

make the most of the cold weather as it gives place to the heat of

summer. There is a period of a week or two in March and early April when,

although the days are very hot, the nights and early mornings are cool,

when the mercury in the thermometer fluctuates between 104° and 68° F. If

at this season a man is energetic enough to rise at 5.15, shortly after

the birds awake, there are few more pleasant ways of spending the ensuing

three hours than by taking what the French would term a promenade upon

the water. The gliding motion of a boat propelled by sail or oar is

always soothing, and is doubly so when one knows that the breeze which

then blows cool upon the cheek will scorch the face seven hours hence.

The morning excursion on the water is rendered especially enjoyable if it

happens to take place at one of the comparatively few parts of the Ganges

or the Jumna where the river-bed is narrow, so that the water fills the

space between the banks, instead of being, as is more usually the case, a

mere trickle of water meandering through a great expanse of sand. Under

the former conditions it is good to sit in the stern of a gliding boat

and watch the birds that frequent the river.

At sunrise the crow-pheasants (_Centropus rufipennis_) come to the

water’s edge to drink, so that numbers of the long-tailed, black birds

with chestnut wings are to be seen from the boat. Having slaked their

thirst, they hop up the steep bank with considerable dexterity, to

disappear into the stunted bushes that grow on the top of the bank. Then

there are, of course, the regular _habitués_ of the water’s edge—the

birds that frequent it at all hours of the day—the ubiquitous paddy bird

(_Ardeola grayii_), which spends the greater part of its life ankle-deep

in water, waiting motionless for the coming of its prey; the common

sandpiper (_Totanus hypoleucus_), that solitary bird, as small as a

starling, which, on the approach of a human being, emits a plaintive cry

and flies away, displaying pointed wings along the length of which runs a

narrow white bar; the handsome spur-winged plover (_Hoplopterus

ventralis_), whose call is very like that of the did-he-do-it—but we must

not dwell on these littoral birds, for to-day I would write of terns, the

river birds _par excellence_. None of God’s creatures are more attractive

than terns to those who love beauty. That few, if any, of our English

poets have sung the praises of these beautiful birds surely demonstrates

how little attention poets pay to nature, and how artificial are their

writings. This will, I fear, annoy the friends of the poets. I am sorry,

but I cannot help it. It is the fault of the bards for having so grossly

neglected the terns.

In colouring, these superb birds show what endless possibilities are open

to the artist who confines himself to black and white and their

combinations.

There is in the flight of terns a poetry of motion over which no one with

an eye for the beautiful can fail to wax enthusiastic. The popular name

for terns—sea-swallows—is a tribute to their wing power. They are all

designed upon a common plan. Length and slimness characterise every part

of their anatomy, save the legs, which are very short. Terns rarely walk;

nearly all their movements are aerial.

The terns that commonly frequent the rivers of Upper India are of three

species—the black-bellied tern (_Sterna melanogaster_), the Indian river

tern (_S. seena_) with its deeply forked tail, and the whiskered tern

(_Hydrochelidon hybrida_), a study in pale grey. These, when not resting

on a sandbank, are dashing through the air without effort, ever and anon

dropping on to the water to pick something from off the surface, or

plunging in after a fish. Allied to the terns, and found along with them,

are the Indian skimmers (_Rynchope albicollis_), easily recognised by

their larger size and black wings.

The passing of a black crow causes some of the terns to desist from their

piscatorial occupation, in order to mob the intruder. This means that

there are terns’ eggs or young ones in the vicinity. Many species of

birds betray the presence of their nests by displaying unusual pugnacity

at the breeding season. To discover the eggs or young of the terns is not

a difficult matter. It is only necessary to land upon the nearest island

between which and the river bank there is a sufficient depth of water to

prevent jackals fording it. If the island contain eggs or young ones, the

parent birds will make a hostile demonstration by collecting overhead and

flying backwards and forwards, uttering their harsh cries, and the nearer

one approaches the nest the more clamorous do they become. In this manner

they unwittingly inform the nest-seeker whether he is getting “hot” or

“cold,” to use the expressions employed in a nursery game.

The terns which breed on islets in Indian rivers do not appear to do much

incubating in the daytime. There is no need for them to do so, because

the sand grows very warm under the rays of the sun. Moreover, the only

foes to be feared are the crows and the kites, which the terns can keep

at bay more effectually when on the wing than while sitting on the eggs.

Very different is the behaviour of the sea terns, whose eggs are liable

to attack by gulls and crabs. For safety’s sake the sea terns lay in

large colonies, and, to use Colonel Butler’s expression, sit on their

eggs “packed together as close as possible without, perhaps, actually

touching one another.” He once came upon the nests of a colony of

large-crested terns (_Sterna bergii_). The sitting birds did not leave

their eggs until he was within a few yards of them. Having put them up,

he retired to a little distance. “No sooner had I done so,” he writes,

“than both species [i.e. the gulls and terns] began to descend in dozens

to the spot where the eggs were lying. In a moment a general fight

commenced, and it was at once evident that the eggs belonged to _Sterna

bergii_, and that the gulls were carrying them off and swallowing their

contents as fast as they could devour them.” River terns do not construct

any nest. They deposit their eggs on the bare, dry sand. The eggs have a

stone-coloured ground, sometimes suffused with pink, blotched with dark

patches, those at the surface of the shell having a sepia hue, and those

deeper down appearing dark greyish mauve. The eggs, although not

conspicuous, may, without difficulty, be detected when lying on the sand.

Their colouring would seem to be adapted to match a stony, rather than a

sandy environment, but the fact that the colouring of the eggs is but

imperfectly protective does not much matter when the latter lie on a sand

island, to which but few predaceous creatures have access; the

watchfulness of the parent birds more than compensates for the

comparative conspicuousness of the eggs.

Young terns, like most other birds, are born helpless, and are then

covered with a greyish down; but before the tail feathers have broken

through their sheaths, and while the wing feathers are quite rudimentary,

the ternlets learn to run about and swim upon the water. At this stage

the little terns look like ducklings when on the water, and, as they run

along the water’s edge, may easily be mistaken, at a little distance, for

sandpipers.

When a young tern is surprised by some enemy, his natural instinct is to

crouch down, half buried in the sand, and to remain there quite

motionless until the danger has passed. The colouring of his down is such

as to cause him to assimilate more closely to the sandy environment than

the eggs do. If one picks up such a crouching ternlet, the bird will

probably not struggle at all; it may, perhaps, peck at one’s fingers, but

in nine cases out of ten will remain limp and motionless in the hand,

looking as though it were dead, and if it be set upon the ground it falls

all of a heap, and remains motionless in the position it assumed when

dropped. If you take a young tern in your hand and lay it upon its back

on the sand it makes no attempt to right itself, but remains motionless

in that attitude, looking for all the world like a trussed chicken; but

if you turn your back upon it, it will take to its little legs and run,

with considerable speed, to the water, to which it takes just as a duck

does, its feet being webbed at all stages of its existence.

XXI

GREEN BULBULS

Since green is a splendid protective colour for an arboreal creature, it

is surprising that there are not more green animals in existence. The

truth of the matter is that green seems to be a difficult colour to

acquire. There does not exist a really green mammal; while green birds

are relatively few and far between. In India we have, it is true, the

green parrots, the barbets, the green pigeons, the green bulbuls, and the

bee-eaters. Take away these and you can count the remaining green birds

on the fingers of your hands. Curiously enough, the bee-eaters spend very

little time in trees; consequently the beautiful leaf-green livery seems

rather wasted on them. And of the other green birds we may almost say

that they are precisely those that seem least in need of this form of

protection. The parrakeets and barbets, thanks to their powerful beaks,

are well adapted to fighting, while more pugnacious birds than bulbuls

and pigeons do not exist. I think, therefore, that the green liveries of

these birds are not the result of their necessity for protection from

raptorial foes. This livery is a luxury rather than a necessity.

Anatomically speaking, green bulbuls are not bulbuls at all. Jerdon

called them bulbuls because of their bulbul-like habits, although, as

“Eha” points out, they take more after the orioles. Oates tells us that

these beautiful birds are glorified babblers, rich relations of the

disreputable-looking seven sisters. He gives them the name _Chloropsis_.

Seven species of green bulbul are found in India; they thus furnish an

excellent example of a bird dividing up into a number of local races.

When the various portions of a species become separated from one another

this phenomenon often occurs. The common grey parrot of Africa is,

according to Sir Harry Johnston, even now splitting up into a number of

local races. That interesting bird is presenting us with an example of

evolution while you wait. It is quite likely that the process may

continue until several distinct species are formed. We must bear in mind

that there is no essential difference between a species and a race. When

the differences between two birds are slight we speak of the latter as

forming two races; when the divergence becomes more marked we call them

species. Very often systematists are divided as to whether two allied

forms are separate species or mere races. In such cases some peacemakers

split the difference and call them sub-species.

Green bulbuls are essentially arboreal birds. In the olden time when

India was densely wooded I believe that there was but one species of

_Chloropsis_, even as there is but one species of house-crow in India

proper. Then, as the land began to be denuded of forest in parts, these

green bulbuls became a number of isolated communities, with the result

that they eventually evolved into several species. In this connection I

may mention that the grey on the neck of _Corvus splendens_ is much more

marked in birds from the Punjab than in those that worry the inhabitants

of Madras.

Of the green bulbuls only two species occur in South India—the Malabar

_Chloropsis_ (_C. malabarica_) and Jerdon’s _Chloropsis_ (_C. Jerdoni_).

The former, as its name tells us, is found in Malabar. The green bulbul

of the other parts of South India is Jerdon’s form. This handsome bird

does not occur in or about the City of Madras; at least I have never seen

it in the neighbourhood, nor indeed nearer than Yercaud. However, not

improbably it occurs between the Shevaroys and the east coast. If anyone

who reads these lines has seen this bird in that area, I hope that he or

she will be kind enough to let me know. Here let me say that to identify

a green bulbul is as easy as falling out of a tree. He is of the same

size as the common bulbul. His prevailing hue is a rich bright

grass-green—the green of grass at its best. His chin and throat are

black, and he has a hyacinth-blue moustache, so that he deserves his

Telugu name—the “Ornament of the Forest.” His wife is pale green where he

is black and her moustache is of a paler blue. The Malabar species is

easily distinguished by its bright orange forehead. Green bulbuls go

about, sometimes in small flocks, more frequently in pairs. They rarely,

if ever, descend to the ground, but flit about amid the foliage, to which

they assimilate so closely, seeking for the insects, fruit, and seed on

which they feed. Like many other gaily attired birds, they give the lie

to the oft-repeated assertion that it is only the dull-hued birds that

are good songsters. Green bulbuls are veritable gramophones, “flagrant

plagiarists” Mr. W. H. Hudson would call them. Not only have they a

number of pretty notes of their own, but the feathered creature whose

song they cannot imitate remains yet to be discovered. Green bulbuls

might be called Indian mocking-birds were there not so many other birds

in the country that imitate the calls of their fellows. Some

ornithologist with a good ear for music should draw up a list of all our

Indian birds that mock the calls of others, setting against each the

names of these whose sounds they imitate.

Green bulbuls are hardy birds and thrive well in captivity. I saw

recently a specimen in splendid condition at a bird show in London.

“There is one drawback, however,” writes Finn in his _Garden and Aviary

Birds of India_, “to this lovely bird (from a fancier’s point of view),

and that is its very savage temper in some cases. In the wild state Mr.

E. C. Stuart Baker has seen two of these birds fight to death, and

another couple defy law and order by hustling a king-crow, of all birds.

And in confinement it is difficult to get two to live together; while

some specimens are perfectly impossible companions for other small birds,

savagely driving them about and not allowing them to feed. Many

individuals, however, are quite peaceable with other birds, and a true

pair will live together in harmony.”

There is nothing remarkable in the nest of the _Chloropsis_; it is a

shallow cup, devoid of lining, placed fairly high up in a tree. July and

August are the months in which to look for nests. Two eggs usually form

the complete clutch. It would thus seem that green bulbuls have not a

great many enemies to fear. Nevertheless they fuss as much over their

eggs as some elderly ladies of my acquaintance do over their baggage when

travelling. Birds and people who worry themselves unduly over their

belongings seem to lose these more often than do those folk who behave

more philosophically. Take the case of the common bulbuls. These

certainly lose more broods than they succeed in rearing, yet the ado they

make when a harmless creature approaches their nest puts one forcibly in

mind of the behaviour of the captain of a Russian gunboat when an

innocent vessel happens to enter the zone of sea in the centre of which

the Czar’s yacht floats.

XXII

CORMORANTS

Cormorants, like Englishmen, have spread themselves all over the earth.

Save for a few out-of-the-way islands, there is no country in the world

that cannot boast of at least one species of cormorant. Cormorants, then,

are an exceedingly successful and flourishing family. It must be very

annoying for those worthy professors and museum naturalists who are

always lecturing to us about the all-importance of protective colouration

that the most flourishing families of birds—the crows and the

cormorants—are as conspicuous as it is possible for a thing in feathers

to be.

Mr. Seton Thompson well says that every animal has some strong point, or

it could not exist; and some weak point, or the other animals could not

exist. Cormorants have several strong points, and that is why they

flourish like the green bay tree, notwithstanding their conspicuous

plumage. They are as hardy as the Scotchman, as voracious as the ostrich,

as tenacious of life as a cat, to say nothing of being piscatorial

experts, powerful fliers, and champion divers.

The cormorant family furnishes a very good example of the manner in which

new species arise quite independently of natural selection.

Notwithstanding their world-wide distribution, all cormorants belong to

one genus, which is divided up into thirty-seven species. Of these no

fewer than fifteen occur in New Zealand—a country not characterised by a

large avifauna.

One species—the large cormorant (_Phalacocorax carbo_)—flourishes in

almost every imaginable kind of climate and among all sorts and

conditions of birds and beasts. Yet in New Zealand, in a country where

the conditions of existence vary but little, cormorants have split up

into fifteen species. It is therefore as clear as anything can be in

nature that we must look to some cause other than natural selection for

an explanation of the multiplicity of species of cormorant in New

Zealand. It seems to me that the solution of this puzzle lies in the fact

that the conditions of life are comparatively easy in New Zealand.

Consequently a well-equipped bird like a cormorant is allowed a certain

amount of latitude as to its form and colouring. In places where the

struggle for existence is very severe, where organisms have their work

cut out to maintain themselves, the chances are that every unfavourable

variation will be wiped out by natural selection; but if the struggle is

not particularly severe, or if a species has something in hand, it can

afford to dispense with part of its advantage and still survive. Thus it

is that in New Zealand we see a number of different species of cormorant

living side by side. De Vries likens natural selection to a sieve through

which all organisms are sifted, and through the meshes of which only

those of a certain description are able to pass. Bateson compares it to a

public examination to which every organism must submit itself. Those

animals that fail to get through are killed. The standard of the

examination may vary in various parts of the world.

So much for cormorants in general and the puzzle they present to

evolutionists. Let us now consider for a little while our Indian

cormorants. For once India is at a disadvantage as compared with New

Zealand. There are but three species found in this country—the great, the

lesser, and the little cormorant. The last—_Phalacocorax javanicus_—is

the most commonly seen of them all. It is to be found in the various

backwaters round about Madras, being especially abundant in the vicinity

of Pulicat. At the place where the canal runs into the lake there are a

number of stakes driven into the canal bed; these project above the level

of the water, and on every one of them a little cormorant is to be seen.

Cormorants in such a position always put me in mind of the pillar saints

of ancient times. Although very active in the water, cormorants become

statuesque in their stillness when they leave it.

The lesser cormorant (_Phalacocorax fuscicollis_) breeds in nests in the

trees on the islets which stud the Redhills Tank near Madras, also on the

tank at Vaden Tangal, near Chingleput. The third species of cormorant

found in India is the great cormorant (_Phalacocorax carbo_). This is the

one which is world-wide in its distribution. It is a large bird, being

over 2 ft. 6 in. in length. It is said to be capable of swallowing at one

gulp a fish fourteen inches long. It is less gregarious in its habits

than the other cormorants, but it breeds and roosts in colonies. Captain

H. Terry states that this species’ nests are to be met with on a tank

near Bellary. The great cormorant possesses fourteen tail feathers, while

all other cormorants have to put up with twelve. Why the big fellow

should be the happy possessor of two extra caudal feathers is a puzzle

which no one has attempted to solve.

It is not very easy to distinguish the three species of cormorant from

one another. The great cormorant has a conspicuous white bar on each side

of the head. This and his larger size serve to separate him from the two

smaller forms. It is usually possible to distinguish the other two by the

fact that the little cormorant has more white on the throat than his

somewhat larger cousin. But, when all is said and done, it is not of

great importance to distinguish the various species. All cormorants have

almost exactly the same habits. The nests are all mere platforms of

sticks. They are all expert fishermen, and seem equally at home on fresh

or salt water. They can swim either on or under water and move at a

considerable pace, covering nearly 150 yards in a minute. The young are

said to feed themselves by inserting their heads into the gullet of the

parent and pulling out the half-digested fish. Cormorants are readily

tamed and are employed in China to fish for their masters, a rubber ring

being inserted round the lower part of the neck in order to prevent the

fish from going too far. In bygone days, fishing by means of cormorants

was considered good sport, and the royal household used to have its

Master of the Cormorants.

Cormorants’ eggs are of a very pale green colour, and their nests smell

of bad fish, for the owners care nothing about sanitation. Young

cormorants are not nearly so black as their parents, and do not attain

adult plumage till they are four years old.

XXIII

A MELODIOUS DRONGO

Our friend the king crow (_Dicrurus ater_) is so abundant throughout

India, and possesses to so great a degree the faculty of arresting the

attention, that we are apt to overlook his less numerous relatives. In

Ceylon it is otherwise. _Dicrurus ater_ occurs in that fair isle, but

only in certain parts thereof, and is not so abundant as his cousin, the

white-vented drongo (_Dicrurus leucopygialis_). The former has,

therefore, to play second fiddle in Ceylon, where he is usually known to

Europeans as the black fly-catcher. The white-vented drongo is their king

crow—the bird that lords over the _corvi_.

The drongos constitute a well-defined family. When you know one member

you can scarcely fail to recognise the others. They fall into two great

classes, the fancy and the plain, the dandies and those that dress

quietly. The bhimraj, or larger racket-tailed drongo (_Dissemurus

paradiseus_), is the most perfect example of the fancy or ornamental

class. His head is set off by a crest, but his speciality is the pair of

outer tail feathers, which attain a length of nearly two feet.

Of the less ornamental drongos, the king crow is the best-known example.

This bird is found in all parts of India, and occurs in Ceylon. Almost as

widely distributed, but far less abundant, is the white-bellied drongo.

This species may be met with in all parts of India save the Punjab. In

the Western Province of Ceylon it is replaced by a drongo having less

white in the plumage.

It is a moot question whether this last is to be looked upon as a race or

a distinct species. Legge writes: “No bird in Ceylon is so puzzling as

the present, and there is none to which I have given so much attention

with a view to arriving at a satisfactory determination as to whether

there are two species in the island or only one. I cannot come to any

other conclusion than that there is but one, the opposing types of which

are certainly somewhat distinct from one another, but which grade into

each other in such a manner as to forbid their being rightly considered

as distinct species; and I will leave it to others, who like to take the

matter up for investigation, to prove whether my conclusions are

erroneous or not.” Oates has since constituted the birds which have less

white on the lower parts a distinct species, which he calls the

white-vented drongo (_Dicrurus leucopygialis_). He admits that the amount

of white on this form and on the white-bellied species (_Dicrurus

cærulescens_) is variable, and that a bird is occasionally met with which

might, as regards this character, be assigned indifferently to one or the

other species, but, says he, the colour of the throat and breast will, in

these cases, be a safe guide in identification. The parts in question are

grey in the white-bellied species and dark brown in the white-vented

form. It seems to me that a slight difference in the colouring of the

feathers of the throat is not a very safe foundation on which to

establish a new species. However, this piece of species-splitting need

not worry the Anglo-Indian, for the white-vented form is found only in

Ceylon. All drongos with white underparts that occur in India are

_Dicrurus cærulescens_. This bird is not common in Madras; I observed it

but twice during eighteen months’ residence in that city. It is in shape

exactly like the common king crow, and possesses the characteristic

forked tail, but it is a smaller bird, being nine and a half inches in

length, and therefore shorter by fully three inches than the black

drongo. Its upper plumage is deep indigo; the throat and breast are grey;

all the remainder of the lower plumage is white. Its habits are very much

like those of the king crow, but it is less addicted to the open country,

seeming to prefer well-wooded localities. I have never seen the _Dhouli_,

or white-bellied drongo, perched on anything but a branch of a tree. It

almost always catches its insect prey upon the wing, after the manner of

a fly-catcher. Jerdon, however, states that he once saw it descend to the

ground for an insect.

As a singer it is far superior to the king crow. In addition to the harsh

notes of that species it produces many melodious sounds. Tickell

describes its song as “a wild, mellow whistle pleasingly modulated.” It

was the voice of the bird that first attracted my notice. Some eight

years ago, when camping in the Fyzabad District, I heard a very pleasing

but unknown song. Tracking this to the mango tope whence it issued, I

discovered that the author was a white-bellied king crow. Last winter a

member of this species favoured me with a fine histrionic performance. I

was sitting outside my tent one afternoon, when I heard above me a harsh

note that was not quite like that of the king crow. Looking up, I

observed, perched on a bare branch at the summit of the tree, a

white-bellied drongo. Then, as if for my especial benefit, he began to

imitate the call of the shikra; he followed this up by a very fair

reproduction of some of the cries of a tree-pie. Having accomplished

this, he made, first his bow, then his exit. I was much interested in the

performance, since an allied species, the bhimraj, is not only one of the

best songsters in the East, but a mimic second only to the wonderful

mocking-bird of South America.

The white-bellied drongo is so rare in the peninsula of India that not

one of our ornithologists has given us anything like a full account of

its habits, and no one appears to have discovered the nest in India.

Fortunately, it is very common in Ceylon, so that Legge has been able to

give some interesting details regarding its habits. We must bear in mind

that Legge includes both the white-bellied varieties under one species.

If we divide them into two, the question arises to which do his various

observations apply? The reply is to either or both, for Legge was not

able to detect any differences between them, except that perhaps the

white-vented variety has a more powerful voice. He writes: “It is

occasionally, when there is abundance of food about, a sociable species,

as many as three or four collecting on one tree, and carrying on a

vigorous warfare against the surrounding insect world.” Like the king

crow, it is an early riser and a late rooster. It is a great chaser of

crows, and of any creature that dares to intrude into the tree in which

its nest is placed. Needless to say that it detests owls. Says Legge:

“The white-bellied king crow never fails to collect all the small birds

in the vicinity whenever it discovers one of these nocturnal offenders,

chasing it through the wood until it escapes into some thicket which

baffles the pursuit of its persecutors.” But why does he call owls

“nocturnal offenders”? Wherein lies their offence? So far as I can see,

the only crime that owls commit is in being owls. The creatures they prey

upon have reason for disliking them. But owls do not attack

ornithologists. Why, then, should these gentry call them hard names?

The nesting habits of both the white-bellied and the white-vented drongos

are very similar to those of the common king crow. Legge describes the

nest as a shallow cup, almost invariably built at the horizontal fork of

the branch of a large tree at a considerable height from the ground,

sometimes as much as forty feet. The eggs seem to vary as greatly in

appearance as do those of the common king crow.

Since the white-bellied drongo appears to be quite as pugnacious as its

black cousin, and to have almost identical habits, it is strange that it

should be so uncommon in India. As we have seen, its distribution is

wide, so that it seems able to adapt itself to various kinds of climate.

Nevertheless, it is common nowhere in India. What is the cause that keeps

down its numbers? Naturalists are wont to talk airily about natural

selection causing a species to be numerous or the reverse, but unless

they can show precisely how natural selection acts they explain nothing.

Those who write books on natural history convey the impression that it is

the birds and beasts of prey that keep down the numbers of the smaller

fry. As a matter of fact, predaceous creatures seem to exercise but

little influence on the numbers of their quarry. There are hidden causes

at work of which we know almost nothing. Damp and small parasites are

probably far more powerful checks on multiplication than predaceous

creatures. It would seem that there is something in the constitution of

the white-bellied drongo which enables it to outnumber the king crows

proper in Ceylon, but which prevents it from becoming abundant in the

peninsula of India. What this something is we have yet to discover. We

really know very little of the nature of that mysterious force with which

naturalists love to conjure, and which Darwin named Natural Selection. We

write it with a capital N and a capital S, and then imagine that we have

explained everything.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

Now we all know what you are.”

XXIV

THE INDIAN PITTA

Some Indian birds are adepts at self-advertisement. To use an expressive

vulgarism, they continually “hit you in the eye”; they obtrude themselves

upon you in season and out of season. Others are so retiring that you may

live among them for years without observing them. To this class, to the

class that hide their light under a bushel, the beautiful Indian pitta

(_Pitta brachyura_) belongs. There is at least one favoured compound in

Madras where a pitta, or possibly a pair of them, spends the cool-weather

season. Pittas proclaim their presence by uttering at dawn their cheery

notes, which have been described as an attempt to whistle, in a

moderately high key, the words “quite clear.” If, on hearing this call,

you are sufficiently energetic to go out of doors, you will probably see

on the ground a bluish bird, about the size of a quail, but before you

have had time to examine it properly it will have taken to its wings and

disappeared into the hedge. Those who are not so fortunate as to have

pittas on the premises may be tolerably certain of seeing a specimen by

visiting the well-wooded plot of land bordered on the west by the canal

and on the south by the Adyar River.

This bird is about seven inches in length. Thus it does not measure much

more than a sparrow, but it is nevertheless considerably larger, for the

tail is very short, being barely one inch and a half in length. The crown

is yellow, tinged with orange, and divided in the middle by a broad black

band running from the beak to the nape of the neck, where it meets a

broader black band that passes below the eye. The eyebrow is white. The

back and shoulders are dull bluish green. The upper tail-coverts are pale

blue. There is also a patch of this colour on the wing. The wings and

tail are black, tipped with blue. During flight the pinions display a

white bar. The chin and throat are white. The breast is of the same

yellow hue as the head. There is a large crimson patch under the tail.

Captain Fayrer’s photograph in _Bombay Ducks_ conveys very well the shape

of the bird, but, of course, does not reproduce the most marked feature

of the pitta—its colouring. Indians in some localities call it the

_naurang_—the nine-colours. The bird may truly be said to be arrayed in a

coat of many colours. Unfortunately, such a garment is apt to lead to

trouble. Even as the coat of many colours brought tribulation upon Joseph

of old, so does the much-coveted, multi-hued plumage of the pitta

frequently bring death to its possessor.

Apart from the colouring, it is impossible to confound the pitta with any

other bird. Its long legs and its apology for a tail recall the

sandpiper, but there is nothing else snippet-like about it. The

classification of the bird has puzzled many a wise head. It has been

variously called the Madras jay, the Bengal quail, the short-tailed pye,

the ant-thrush, the painted thrush, and the ground thrush. But it is not

a jay, neither is it a quail, nor a thrush, nor a tailless pye. It is a

bird made on a special model. It belongs to a peculiar family, to a

branch of the great order of perching birds, which differs from all the

other clans in some important anatomical details. Into these we will not

go, for they belong to morphology, the science which concerns itself

chiefly with the dry bones of zoology, with the lifeless aspect of the

science of life.

The Indian pitta is a bird which likes warmth, but not heat, so that it

refuses to live in the Punjab, where the climate is one of extremes—a

spell of cold, then a headlong rush into a period of intense heat,

followed by an equally sudden return to a low temperature. The pitta

seems to occur in all parts of Eastern, Central, and Southern India,

undergoing local migration to the south in the autumn and back again in

the spring. In places where the climate is never very hot or very cold,

as, for example, Madras and the hills in Ceylon, some individuals seem to

remain throughout the year. I have seen pittas in Madras at all seasons,

and I know of no better testimonial to the excellence of the climate of

that city. Jerdon writes of the pitta: “In the Carnatic it chiefly occurs

in the beginning of the hot weather, when the land-winds first begin to

blow with violence from the west; and the birds in many instances appear

to have been blown, by the strong wind, from the Eastern Ghauts, for,

being birds of feeble flight, they are unable to contend against the

strength of the wind. At this time they take refuge in huts, outhouses,

or any building that will afford them shelter. The first bird of this

kind that I saw had taken refuge in the General Hospital at Madras; and

subsequently, at Nellore, I obtained many alive under the same

circumstances.” Other observers have had similar experiences. Bligh, for

instance, states that in Ceylon pittas are frequently caught in bungalows

on coffee estates on cold and stormy days.

It is strange that so retiring a bird as the pitta should find its way

with such frequency into inhabited houses. Jerdon’s explanation is its

“feeble flight,” but I doubt whether he is correct in calling the pitta a

bird of weak flight; it can travel very fast, for short distances at any

rate. It seems to me that the pitta dislikes cold and wind, and therefore

naturally seeks any shelter that presents itself. Not being a garden

bird, it is unaware that the bungalow, which offers such tempting cover,

is the abode of human beings. Possibly another reason why the pitta so

frequently enters bungalows is to avoid the crows. Dr. Henderson tells me

that he was playing tennis some years ago at a friend’s house in Madras

when he saw a bird being chased by a mob of crows. The fugitive took

refuge in the drawing-room of the house, where Dr. Henderson caught it,

and found that it was an uninjured but very much frightened pitta. Mr. D.

G. Hatchell informs me that he once picked up in his verandah a dead

pitta that had probably been killed by crows. The _corvi_ are out-and-out

Tories. They strongly resent all innovation _qua_ innovation. Any

addition to the local fauna is exceedingly distasteful to them. They

object to the foreigner quite as strongly as do (perhaps I should say

“did”) the Chinese. It is for this reason that they mob every strange

bird that shows its face. Now, they seldom come across either the

creatures of the night or the denizens of the thick undergrowth;

consequently, when such venture forth into the light of day the crows

forthwith attack them.

The pitta feeds chiefly on beetles, termites, ants, and other creeping

things, which it seeks out among fallen leaves, after the manner of the

“seven sisters.” The pitta is quick on its feet, and is able to hop and

run with equal ease. It thrives in captivity. It is an excellent pet,

provided it be not kept with smaller birds. It regards these as so much

fresh meat especially provided for it.

The nest of the pitta is described as a globular structure fully nine

inches in horizontal diameter and six inches high, with a circular

aperture on one side. Twigs, roots, and dried leaves are the building

materials utilised. The eggs are exceedingly beautiful. “The ground

colour,” writes Hume, “is China white, sometimes faintly tinged with

pink, sometimes creamy; and the eggs are speckled and spotted with deep

maroon, dark purple, and brownish purple as primary markings, and pale

inky purple as secondary ones. Occasionally, instead of spots, the

markings take the form of fine hair-like lines.”

XXV

THE INDIAN WHITE-EYE

The Indian white-eye (_Zosterops palpebrosa_) is a bird which should be

familiar to everyone who has visited the Nilgiris. To wander far in a

hillside wood without meeting a flock of these diminutive creatures is

impossible. Sooner or later a number of monosyllabic notes will be heard,

each a faint, plaintive cheep. On going to the tree from which these

notes appear to emanate a rustle will be observed here and there in the

foliage. Closer inspection will reveal a number of tiny birds flitting

about among the leaves. These are white-eyes—the most sociable of birds.

Except when nesting, they invariably go about in companies of not less

than twenty or thirty. Each individual is as restless as a wren, so that

some patience must be exercised by the observer if he wish to obtain a

good view of any member of the flock. But by standing perfectly

motionless for a time under the tree in which the birds are feeding he

who is watching will, ere long, be able to make out that the white-eye is

a tiny creature, not much more than half the size of a sparrow. The upper

parts are yellowish green, the chin, throat, and feathers under the tail

are bright yellow, and the remainder of the lower surface of whitish hue.

The most marked feature of the _Zosterops_ is a conspicuous ring of white

feathers round the eye, which causes the bird to look as though it were

wearing white spectacles. From this circle the species derives its

popular names, the white-eye or spectacle bird. Thanks to the conspicuous

eye-ring, it is impossible to mistake the bird.

All feathered creatures that go about in flocks and haunt thick foliage

emit unceasingly a call note, by means of which the members of the flock

keep in touch with one another. This ceaseless cheeping note is probably

uttered unconsciously. Each individual listens, without knowing that it

is doing so, for the calls of its fellows; so long as it hears these it

is happy. When the main volume of the sound grows faint the individual

white-eye knows that his companions are moving away from him; he

accordingly flies in the direction from which their calls are coming,

giving vent, as he goes, to a louder cheep than usual. Whenever a

white-eye flies from one tree to another it utters this more powerful

call and thereby informs its fellows that it is moving forward. This

louder cry stimulates the others to follow the bird that has taken the

lead. All the time they are thus flitting about the white-eyes are busy

picking tiny insects off the leaves. I have never observed them eating

anything but insects. Legge, however, asserts that their diet is for the

most part frugivorous, in consequence of which the birds are, according

to him, very destructive to gardens, picking off the buds of fruit trees,

as well as attacking the fruit itself. He further declares that he has

known caged individuals in England feed with avidity on dried figs.

Hutton also states that white-eyes feed greedily upon the small black

berries of a species of _Rhamnus_, common in the Himalayas.

Notwithstanding the authorities cited, it is my belief that these little

birds are almost exclusively insectivorous. They perform a useful work in

devouring numbers of obnoxious insects, which they extract from flowers.

In so doing their heads sometimes become powdered with pollen, so that

the white-eyes probably, like bees and moths, render service to plants by

carrying pollen from one flower to another.

The search for food does not occupy the whole day. Except at the nesting

season, the work of birds is light. In the early morning the white-eyes

feed industriously; so that by noon they have satisfied their hunger.

They then flit and hop and fly about purely for pleasure. White-eyes,

like all small birds, literally bubble over with energy. They are as

restless as children. Once when walking through the Lawrence Gardens at

Lahore in the days when they had not yet fallen into the clutches of that

enemy of beautiful scenery, the landscape gardener, I came across a

company of these charming little birds disporting themselves amid some

low bushes near a plantation of loquat trees. First one little bird, then

another, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, etc., dropped to the ground,

only to return at once to the bush whence they came. A whole flock

appeared to be taking part in this pastime. There were two continuous

streams, one of descending and the other of ascending white-eyes. These

might have been little fluffy, golden balls with which some unseen person

was playing.

When the heat of the day is at its zenith, white-eyes, like most birds in

India, enjoy a _siesta_. At this hour little gatherings of them may be

seen, each bird huddled against its neighbours on some bough of a leafy

tree.

At the nesting season the white-eye sings most sweetly. The ordinary

cheeping note then becomes glorified into something resembling the lay of

the canary; less powerful, but equally pleasing to the ear.

The nest of the white-eye is a neat little cup, or, as Mr. A. Anderson

describes it, a hollow hemisphere. It is a miniature of the oriole’s

nursery. It is large for the size of the bird, being usually over two

inches in diameter. Some nests are fully two inches deep, while others

are quite shallow. It is composed of fine fibres (i.e. grass stems,

slender roots, moss, and seed down) and cotton, bound together by cobweb,

which is the cement most commonly used by bird masons. The nursery is

invariably provided with a lining. In one nest that I found, this lining

consisted of human hair. Other lining materials are silky down, hair-like

moss and fern-roots, and grass fibres so fine that the horsehairs which

are sometimes utilised look quite coarse beside them. The most wonderful

thing about the nest of this pretty little bird is the manner in which it

is attached to its supports. I have called it a miniature of the oriole’s

nursery, because it is usually suspended from two or more branches by

cotton fibres. I once came upon a nest which was attached to but one

slender branch, and to the tip of this. The end was worked into the

structure of the nest so that the whole looked like a ladle with a very

thin handle. It seemed incredible that so slight a branch could support

the nest and its contents.

I have not been fortunate enough to watch the white-eye building its

nest. Mr. A. Anderson states that the pair—for both the cock and the hen

take part in nest construction—“set to work with cobwebs, and having

first tied together two or three leafy twigs to which they intend to

attach their nest, they then use the fine fibre of the _sunn_

(_Crotalaria juncea_), with which material they complete the outer fabric

of their very beautiful and compact nest. As the work progresses, more

cobwebs and fibre of a silky kind are applied externally, and at times

the nest, when tossed about by the wind (sometimes at a considerable

elevation), would be mistaken by a casual observer for an accidental

collection of cobwebs. The inside of the nest is well felted with the

down of the _madar_ plant, and then it is finally lined with fine hair

and grass stems of the softest kind.” The nest is usually situated within

three or four feet of the ground, but is sometimes placed at much higher

elevations.

In South India, the time to look for white-eyes’ nests is from January to

March. In the north, the majority of nests are found between April and

June.

The eggs are a beautiful pale blue. Most commonly only two seem to be

laid. There are, however, many cases on record of three and a few of four

eggs. This is an unusually small clutch. Nevertheless it is unlikely that

a pair of white-eyes bring up more than two broods in the year. These

facts, when taken in conjunction with the wide distribution of the

species, indicate that the white-eye meets with exceptional success in

rearing its young. The nest is usually well concealed in the depths of a

leafy bush. Squirrels and lizards must find the suspended nursery

difficult of access. In addition to this we must bear in mind that

white-eyes are plucky little creatures. Mr. Ball describes how he saw one

of them attacking a rose-finch, a vastly more powerful bird, and drive it

away from the flowers of the _mohwa_, which form a favourite

hunting-ground of the white-eye.

As I have repeatedly stated, pugnacity is a more valuable asset than

protective colouration in the struggle for existence.

Lastly, the white-eye appears able to thrive under greatly varying

conditions of climate.

These advantages possessed by white-eyes, I think, explain why the clutch

of eggs is so small.

White-eyes make excellent pets. They will live amicably along with

amadavats in a cage. Finn is my authority for saying that soft fruit,

bread and milk, and small insects are all the food required by

white-eyes, and they are so easy to keep that many specimens are sent to

Europe.

XXVI

GOOSEY, GOOSEY GANDER

The goose, like certain ladies who let lodgings, has seen better times.

It is a bird that has come down in the world. For some reason which I

have never been able to discover, it is nowadays the object of popular

ridicule. It is commonly set forth as the emblem of foolishness.

Invidious comparisons are proverbially drawn between it and its more

handsome cousin, the swan. The modern bards vie with one another in

blackening its character. As Phil Robinson says, “It does not matter who

the poet is—he may be anyone between a Herbert and a Butler—the goose is

a garrulous fool, _et præterea nihil_.” Well may the bird cry _O tempora!

O mores!_ It has indeed fallen upon evil days. Things were not ever thus.

Time was when men held the goose in high esteem. Livy was loud in his

praises of the bird. Pliny was an ardent admirer thereof. The Romans used

to hold a festival in honour of the feathered saviour of the Capitol. The

degradation of the goose is, I fear, a matter of looks. Its best friend

can scarcely call it handsome. It is built for natation rather than

perambulation; nevertheless it spends much time out of water and feeds

chiefly on _terra firma_. It is probably a bird that is undergoing

evolution, a bird that is changing its habits. It has taken to a more or

less terrestrial existence, but has not yet lost what I may perhaps call

the aquatic waddle. While walking it looks as though it might lose its

balance at any moment. As a matter of fact, the goose is no mean

pedestrian, and is capable of performing considerable journeys on foot.

When pressed, it can show a fine turn of speed. This I have had some

opportunity of observing in the Zoological Gardens at Lahore. A crane

(_Grus antigone_) is confined in the water-birds’ enclosure along with

the ducks, geese, pelicans, etc. Now, cranes are the most frolicsome and

playful of birds. In no other fowl is the sense of humour more highly

developed. The crane in question continually indulges in “cake walks,”

and cuts other mad capers. Sometimes it is seized with the impulse to

“clear the decks,” that is to say, the banks of the ornamental pond. The

operation is conducted as follows: The crane opens out its wings, takes

two wild jumps into the air, then rushes at the nearest duck or goose,

with wings expanded, looking as though it were going through one of the

figures of the serpentine dance. The frightened duck flees before the

crane; the latter keeps up the chase until the duck takes refuge in the

water. Having succeeded in its object, the crane trumpets loudly and

performs a dance which a Red Indian on the war-path could scarcely hope

to emulate. It next turns its attention to some other inoffensive duck or

goose. It is while being thus chased that pinioned geese show a fine turn

of speed. Fly they cannot, so they sprint with expanded wings.

The goose is a great favourite of mine. The more one sees of the bird the

more one likes it and appreciates its good qualities. It is a creature of

character. It rapidly forms attachments, and will sometimes follow about,

like a dog, the person to whom it has taken a fancy. A curious instance

of this was recorded many years ago by _The Yorkshire Gazette_. A gander

belonging to a farmer developed a liking for an old gentleman. The bird

used to go every morning from the farmyard to the house of the said

elderly gentleman and awake him by its cries. It would then accompany him

the whole day in his walks and strut behind him in the most frequented

streets, unmindful of the screams of the urchins by whom the strange pair

were often followed. When the old gentleman sat down to rest the gander

used to squat at his feet. When they were approaching a seat on which the

old man was accustomed to sit the gander used to run on ahead and signify

by cackling and flapping of wings that the resting-place was reached.

When anyone annoyed the old gentleman the gander would express its

displeasure by its cries and sometimes by biting. When its friend went

into an inn to take a glass of ale, the bird used to follow him inside if

permitted; if not allowed to do so, it would wait outside for him.

One should not of course accept as gospel truth everything one reads in a

newspaper. It is necessary to discriminate. Thus, when a well-known

weekly journal produces a picture of the ladies of a Sultan’s harem

dancing unveiled before a distinguished company of gentlemen, one begins

to wonder whether truth really is stranger than fiction. However, I see

no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the story of the Yorkshire

gander. The goose is an exceptionally intelligent bird and is very easily

tamed. I once made friends with a goose in the Zoological Gardens at

Lahore. It was a white, bazaar-bred bird. Whenever it saw me it used to

walk up to the fence and emit a low note of welcome. I was able to

distinguish that particular bird from the other geese by the fact that a

piece had been broken off its upper mandible.

I am glad to notice that Mr. W. H. Hudson, one of the leading British

ornithologists, has a high opinion of the goose. In his _Birds and Man_

he gives a delightful account of the home-coming of a flock of tame geese

led by a gander. He writes: “Arrived at the wooden gate of the garden in

front of the cottage, the leading bird drew up square before it, and with

repeated loud screams demanded admittance. Pretty soon in response to the

summons, a man came out of the cottage, walked briskly down the

garden-path and opened the gate, but only wide enough to put his right

leg through; then placing his foot and knee against the leading bird he

thrust him roughly back; as he did so three young geese pressed forward

and were allowed to pass in; then the gate was slammed in the face of the

gander and the rest of his followers, and the man went back to the

cottage. The gander’s indignation was fine to see, though he had probably

experienced the same rude treatment on many previous occasions. Drawing

up before the gate again, he called more loudly than before; then

deliberately lifted a leg, and placing his broad webbed foot like an open

hand against the gate, actually tried to push it open. His strength was

not sufficient, but he continued to push and call until the man returned

to open the gate and let the birds go in.”

If only for his sturdy independence and his insistence on his rights the

gander is a bird whose character is worthy of study. He is courageous

too; so is his wife. She will stand up fearlessly to a boy, a kite, or

even a fox, when her brood is threatened. Last year in the Lahore

Zoological Gardens a goose hatched a number of goslings. The kites

regarded these as fair game, and, in spite of the efforts of the mother,

carried off several of the young birds. Thereupon four ganders took

counsel and constituted themselves a bodyguard for the goose and chicks,

one or more of them being always on duty. In spite of this a kite managed

to secure another gosling. The mother and her remaining five chicks were

then placed in a cage; notwithstanding this, the ganders still maintained

their guard and cried loudly whenever a human being approached the cage

containing the brood.

The goose, like the swan, uses its wing as a weapon. When it attacks it

stretches its neck and head low along the ground and hisses; it then

dashes at its adversary, seizes him with beak and claws, and lays on to

him right well with its powerful wings.

Here endeth the account of “Goosey, Goosey Gander.” I must apologise to

the geese in their natural state for having completely ignored them. We

will make amends by indulging in a wild-goose chase at an early date!

XXVII

GEESE IN INDIA

Seven or eight species of goose have been recorded as winter visitors to

India. With two exceptions they honour us with their presence only on

rare occasions, and do not really form part and parcel of our Indian

avifauna. The exceptions are the grey lag goose and the barred-headed

goose, which visit India every winter in their millions. It is these that

form the subject of this essay. It is difficult for the dweller in the

south to realise how abundant geese are in Northern India throughout the

cold weather. Flocks of them fly overhead so frequently that they

scarcely attract notice. Each flight looks like a great trembling,

quivering V, floating in the air, a V of which the angle is wide and one

limb frequently longer than the other. During flight geese are

distinguishable from cranes and storks by this V-shaped formation, and by

the fact that they never sail on expanded wings; they progress by means

of a steady, regular motion of the pinions, and are able to cover long

distances in short time. Geese on the wing are distinguishable from the

smaller species of duck by their larger size, and from Brahminy ducks

(_Casarca_ _rutila_) by their lighter colour. Moreover, the curious note

of this last species is very different from the cackle of geese. Brahminy

ducks go about in couples; geese fly in flocks.

Like most birds which breed in the far north, geese are largely

nocturnal; their cries as they fly overhead are among the commonest of

the sounds which break the stillness of the winter night in Upper India.

They feed mainly in the hours of darkness, and do a certain amount of

damage to the young wheat; nor do they leave their feeding ground until

the sun is high in the heavens, when they repair to a river bank or

shallow lake, where they love to bask in the sun, all with the head

tucked under the wing, save one or two who do duty as sentinels.

The grey lag goose of India is, I believe, identical with the wild goose

of England. This is a belief not shared by everyone. For over a century

this species has been the plaything of the systematist. Linnæus classed

ducks and geese as one genus—_Anas_. This goose he called _Anas anser_,

the goose-duck. But it was soon recognised that ducks and geese are not

sufficiently nearly related to form a common genus; hence, the geese were

formed into the genus _Anser_, and the grey lag goose was then called

_Anser cinereus_, the ashy-coloured goose, a not inappropriate name,

although the bird is brown rather than grey. But the name was not allowed

to stand. For some reason or other it was changed to _Anser ferus_. Then

it was altered to _Anser anser_—the goosey goose, presumably meaning the

goose _par excellence_. Then Salvadori discovered, or thought that he

discovered, that the grey lag geese of the East are not quite like those

of the West; he therefore made two species of the bird, calling the

Indian variety _Anser rubirostris_, the red-billed goose. Alphéraky

denies the alleged difference. The result is that the bird has some

half-dozen names, each of which has its votaries. It is this kind of

thing which deprives classical nomenclature of all its utility. Until

ornithologists learn to grasp the simple fact that the external

appearance of every living creature is the result of two sets of forces,

internal or hereditary, and external or the influence of environment,

they will always be in difficulty over species. Englishmen who dwell in

sunny climates get browned by the sun, yet no one dreams of making a

separate species of sun-burned Englishmen. Why, then, do so in the case

of birds whose external appearance is slightly altered by their

environment?

Even as scientific men have toyed with the Latin name of the bird, so

have compositors played with its English name. Nine out of ten of them

flatly decline to call it the grey lag goose; they persist in setting it

down as the grey _leg_ goose. If the bird’s legs were grey this would not

matter. Unfortunately they are not. In extenuation of the conduct of the

compositor there is the fact that etymologists are unable to agree as to

the meaning and derivation of the word lag.

The other common species of goose is the barred-headed goose (_Anser

indicus_). This is not found in Europe. It is a grey bird, more so than

the grey lag goose, with two black bands across the back of the head. The

upper one runs from eye to eye, the lower is parallel to, but shorter

than, the upper bar. The back of the neck is black and the sides white.

There is some black in the wings. The bill and feet are yellow. Both

these species of goose are a little smaller than the domestic bird.

Geese are very wary creatures, and possess plenty of intelligence. They

all seem to know intuitively the range of a gun, and as they object to

being peppered with No. 2, or any other kind of shot, it is necessary for

the sportsman to have recourse to guile if he would make a bag. It is

this which makes shooting them such good sport. Every bird obtained has

to be worked for. By rising very early in the morning the gunner may

sometimes get a shot at them while they are feeding. They seem to be less

wary then than later in the day. Sometimes, when riding at sunrise, I

have suddenly found myself within forty yards of a flock of geese feeding

in a field.

They usually indulge in their midday siesta in an open place, and

invariably post sentinels. For this reason they do not give one much

opportunity of observing them. They cannot, or pretend they cannot,

distinguish between the naturalist and the sportsman. In this, perhaps,

they are wise. Their intelligence has, I think, been exaggerated. Last

winter, when punting down the Jumna, I noticed a flock of geese resting

on the moist sand at the water’s edge. Behind them was a semi-circular

sandbank, some fifteen feet in height. This bank sheltered the geese from

the wind. Birds, like ladies, object to having their feathers ruffled. It

occurred to me that owing to the sandbank one could approach quite near

to the flock unobserved. Knowing that geese are creatures of habit, I

counted on the flock being at the identical spot next day. Consequently,

I returned the following morning and approached on all fours from the

sandbank side, and was rewarded by securing a barred-headed goose. I

repeated the operation on the following day, and again bagged a goose.

The third day I was unable to visit the place, so sent a friend, who was

only prevented from slaying a goose by the fact that two Brahminy ducks

in mid-stream saw him approaching and gave the alarm. We left the camp

the next day. I do not, therefore, know whether the geese continued to

frequent that danger-fraught sandbank. The fact that they allowed

themselves to be caught napping thrice shows that they have not quite so

much intelligence as some people credit them with. For all that, the

goose is no fool.

XXVIII

A SWADESHI BIRD

I commend the common peafowl (_Pavo cristatus_) to the Indian patriot,

for it is a true _Swadeshi_ bird. It is made in India and nowhere else.

The beastly foreigner does, indeed, produce a cheap imitation in the

shape of _Pavo muticus_—the Javan peafowl; but with this the patriotic

Indian bird will have nothing to do. The two species are very like in

appearance, the most noticeable difference being in the shape of the

crest; that of the Indian species is like an expanded fan, while the

cranial ornament of the Javan species resembles a closed fan.

Notwithstanding their similarity they do not interbreed when brought

together. This, I am aware, was not Jerdon’s view. He stated that hybrids

between the two species were not rare in aviaries. In this particular

instance Jerdon, _mirabile dictu_, seems to have been wrong; he probably

mistook the japanned variety of the common bird for a hybrid. My

experience tends to show that the two species will not interbreed. Caste

feeling evidently runs high.

Peafowl are distributed all over India; they occur in most localities

suited to their habits, that is to say where there is plenty of cover,

good crops, and abundance of water. They are very plentiful in the

Himalayan _terai_, where they are a source of annoyance to the sportsman.

You are sitting in your _machan_, listening to the approaching line of

beaters. Presently there is a rustle among the fallen leaves; a creature

is making its way through the undergrowth. You listen intently, and

perceive with satisfaction that the moving object is coming towards your

_machan_. You are now all attention, and grasp your rifle in such a

manner that it can, in an instant, be brought to your shoulder. Then, to

your disgust, a peacock emerges with a

good-morning-have-you-used-Pear’s-soap air. When, after about half a

dozen of these false alarms, a bear appears, you are, as likely as not,

unprepared for him.

In many parts of Northern India, notably in those districts through which

the Jumna and Ganges run, peafowl are accounted sacred by the Hindu

population. If you shoot one in such a locality the villagers have a

disagreeable way of turning out _en masse_, armed with _lathis_. The

reverence for the peacock is curiously local. In one village the people

will invite you to shoot the birds on account of the damage they do to

the crops; while the inhabitants of a village at a distance of less than

a hundred miles will send a wire to the Lieutenant-Governor if you so

much as point a gun at the sacred fowl. I once camped in a district where

peafowl were exceptionally numerous, and on this account I concluded that

they were venerated by the populace. But, sacred or not, I hold that

there is nothing to equal a young peafowl as a table bird, so I used to

mark down the trees in which the pea-chicks roosted, and return to the

spot with a gun, after the shades of night had fallen. Having shot a

sleeping bird I smuggled it into camp in order not to offend the village

folk. After having taken these precautions for about two months I learned

that the people entertained no objection whatever to the birds being

shot! Peafowl are objects of veneration in all the Native States of

Rajputana. These are strongholds of orthodox Hinduism. Nilgai, even, may

not be shot, because the Pundits, not being zoological experts, labour

under the delusion that these ungainly antelope are kine.

In some parts of India peafowl may be seen in a state of

semi-domestication and are regularly fed by temple keepers. The drawback

to the peacock as a domestic bird is that he renders the night hideous by

his cries, which resemble those of an exceptionally lusty cat. Blanford,

I notice, called them “sonorous.” There is no accounting for taste. In my

opinion, peafowl should be seen and not heard.

The peacock, like the ostrich, is almost omnivorous; it feeds chiefly

upon grain, buds, and shoots of grass, but it is not averse to insects,

and will devour many of these, which are generally supposed to be

inedible and so warningly coloured. Lizards and snakes complete a varied

menu.

The peafowl is a bird of considerable interest to the zoologist, as it

affords a striking example of sexual dimorphism. In plain English, the

cock differs greatly from the hen in appearance. In some species, such as

the myna, the crow, and the blue jay, the cock is indistinguishable from

the hen. In others, as, for example, the sparrow, the sexes differ

slightly in appearance. In others, again, the cock differs from the hen

as the sun does from the moon. The peafowl is one of these.

Zoologists have for years been trying to find out why in some species the

cock resembles the hen while in others it does not. Humiliating though it

be, we must, if we are honest, admit that we are little, if any, nearer

the explanation of the phenomenon than we were a couple of centuries ago.

Darwin thought that the pretty plumage of the males was due to selection

on the part of the females. He tried to prove that hens are able to pick

and choose their mates, that they have a keen eye for beauty. Just as

political economists of Ricardo’s school teach us that every man marries

the richest woman who will have him, so does Darwin ask us to believe

that hens always mate with the best-looking of their suitors, that they

quiz each with the eye of an art critic, and pronounce judgment somewhat

as follows: “Number one is no class; his train is too short. I would not

be seen dead beside number two; he looks as though he had issued from a

fifth-rate dyer’s shop. I’ll take number three, he is the pick of the

bunch.” Darwin argued that the showy cocks are fully alive to their good

looks, and know how to show them off to best advantage. There is much to

be said in favour of his theory. A peacock, when he sees a hen that he

admires, promptly turns his back upon her, erects his great train and his

paltry little tail which is hidden away underneath. He then spreads out

his feathers and suddenly faces the hen, flapping his wings, and causing

every feather in his body to quiver with a curious noise, so that he

appears to be seized with a shivering fit. The hen either affects not to

notice him, or assumes an air of studied boredom. Unfortunately for

Darwin’s theory, peacocks sometimes show off in the absence of other

living creatures. Moreover, a young cock with a train of which a magpie

would be ashamed will strut about and show off with the greatest pride.

There are in the “Zoo” at Lahore a number of albino peacocks. These,

although handsome birds, are not so beautiful as the coloured variety,

being a uniform white; nevertheless they are exceedingly popular with the

hens, and experience no difficulty in cutting out all the coloured beaux.

It is very naughty of the hens to prefer the albinos, for by so doing

they deal a severe blow to the theory of sexual selection. Stolzman has

quite another hypothesis to account for the superior beauty of the male.

As any “suffragette” will tell you, the male is a more or less

superfluous being; the world would get along much better if he were less

plentiful. Hence, in the interests of the race, it is necessary that the

numbers of the pernicious creature should be strictly limited. Nature

has, therefore, arrayed cock-birds in coats of many colours so that they

shall be easily seen and devoured by beasts of prey! Wallace, again,

thinks that the comparatively sombre hues of the hen are due to her

greater need of protection, as it is she who does all the incubating. An

objection to this view is the well-known fact that many showy cocks sit

on the eggs turn-about with the dull-coloured hens in open and exposed

nests.

Peafowl are polygamous. The breeding season begins in May and continues

all through the hot weather. The typical nest is described as “a broad

depression scratched by the hen, and lined with a few leaves and twigs or

a little grass.” It is usually made amongst thick grass or in dense

bushes, but occasionally there is no attempt at concealment. Mr. A.

Anderson states that peahens frequently lay at high elevations, that he

has on several occasions taken their eggs from the roofs of huts of

deserted villages on which rank vegetation grew to a height of two or

three feet. My experience of captive birds bears out this. The peahens in

the Lahore “Zoo” lay all their eggs on a broad shelf in their aviary,

some fifteen feet above the level of the ground. Seven or eight eggs of a

dirty white hue are laid. These are, in the words of Hume, “delicious

eating.”

XXIX

THE INDIAN REDSTART

Poets, naturalists, essayists, and novelists have with one accord and

from time immemorial extolled the English spring. In this particular

instance their eulogies are justified, for spring in England is like a

wayward maiden: when she does choose to be amiable, she is so amiable

that her past perverseness is at once forgiven. But why do not

Anglo-Indian writers sing to the glories of the Indian autumn? Is it not

worthy of all praise? It is the season which corresponds most nearly to

spring in England, and is as much longed for. Even as spring chases away

the gloomy, cheerless English winter, so does autumn drive away the

Indian hot weather, unpleasant everywhere, and terrible in the plains of

the Punjab and the United Provinces. Those condemned to live in Portland

Gaol probably suffer fewer physical discomforts than they who spend the

summer in any part of the plains of Northern India. First, weeks of a

furnace-like heat, when to breathe seems an effort; then a long spell of

close, steamy heat, so that the earth seems to have become a great

washhouse. From this the Anglo-Indian emerges, limp, listless, and

languid. How great, then, is his joy when one day he notices a suspicion

of coolness in the air. Day by day this coolness grows more appreciable,

so that by late September or early October to take an early-morning

stroll becomes a pleasure. Then the sky is bluer, the atmosphere is

clearer, the foliage is greener than at any other time of the year. Then

at eventide the village smoke hangs low, looking like a thin blue

semi-transparent cloud resting lightly on the earth—a sure sign of the

approaching cold weather. Then, too, the winter birds begin to appear.

Even as the cuckoo is welcomed in England as the harbinger of the sweet

spring, so in Northern India is the redstart looked for as the herald of

the glorious cold weather. Within a week of the first sight of that

sprightly little bird will come the day when punkahs cease to be a

necessity. Last year (1907) the hot weather lingered long, and the

redstarts were late in coming. It was not until the 27th September that I

observed one at Lahore.

Several species of redstart are found within Indian limits, but only one

of them haunts the plains, and so thoroughly deserves the name of the

Indian redstart (_Ruticilla rufiventris_). This species visits India in

hundreds of thousands from September to April.

I have observed it in the city of Madras, but so far south as that it is

not common, being a mere straggler to those parts. In the Punjab and the

United Provinces, however, it is exceedingly numerous. Throughout the

cold weather at least one pair take up their abode in every compound.

The Indian redstart is a sexually dimorphic species, that is to say the

cock differs from the hen in appearance; the former, moreover, is

seasonally dimorphic. The feathers of his head, neck, breast, and back

are black with grey fringes. In the autumn and early winter the grey

edges completely obliterate the black parts, so that the bird looks grey.

But during the winter the grey edges gradually become worn away, and the

black portions then show, so that by the middle of the summer the cock

redstart is a black bird. Thus he remains until transformed by the

autumnal moult. His under parts are deep orange, and his lower back and

all the tail feathers, except the middle pair, are brick-red. Now, when

the tail is unexpanded the two middle caudal feathers are folded over the

others, and hide them from view, and, as the lower back is covered by the

wings, the red parts are not visible when the bird walks about looking

for food; but the moment it takes to its wings all the red feathers

become displayed, so that the bird, as it flies away, looks as though its

plumage were almost entirely red. Hence the name redstart—“start” being

an old English word for tail. Another popular name for the bird is

firetail.

Two species of redstart visit England, and these also are characterised

by reddish tails. The hen Indian redstart is reddish brown where the cock

is grey or black, and red where he is red. The gradual change in colour

undergone by the cock redstart every year is instructive, because it

seems to show that the bird is even now undergoing evolution. I think it

likely that the feathers of the cock were at one time uniformly grey and

that they are becoming a uniform black. The tendency seems to be for the

grey margin to become narrower. It will probably eventually disappear. In

some birds it is so narrow that much black shows even after the autumn

moult; in others the margin is so broad that it never disappears. What is

causing this change in plumage? It cannot be the need for protection. The

incipient blackness is probably an indirect result of either natural or

sexual selection. Thus birds with black bases to their feathers may be

either more robust or have stronger sexual instincts than those which

have scarcely any black. In the former case natural selection, and in the

latter sexual selection, will tend to preserve those individuals which

have the least grey in their feathers. This idea of the connection

between colour and strength is not mere fancy. Cuckoo-coloured

(barred-grey) birds are very common among ordinary fowls, but are, I

believe, never seen among Indian gamecocks. Grey plumage seems to be

inconsistent with fighting propensities. Black, on the other hand, seems

to be a good fighting colour. Most black-plumaged birds, as, for example,

the king crow, the various members of the crow tribe, and the coot, are

exceedingly pugnacious.

Redstarts live largely on the ground, from which they pick their food.

This appears to consist exclusively of tiny insects. They sometimes hawk

their quarry on the wing. They are usually found near a hedge or thicket,

into which they take refuge when disturbed. They show but little fear of

man, and, consequently, frequent gardens. They occasionally perch on the

housetop. Indeed, they are quite robin-like in their habits, and the

species, thanks to its reddish abdomen, looks more like the familiar

English robin than does the Indian robin.

The Indian redstart, like all its family, has a peculiar quivering motion

of its tail, which is especially noticeable immediately after it has

alighted on a perch; hence its Hindustani name, _Thir-thira_, the

trembler. Its Telugu name is said to be _Nuni-budi-gadu_—the oil-bottle

bird—a name of which I am unable to offer any explanation. Eurasian boys

call it the “devil bird,” for reasons best known to themselves.

The redstart stays in India until May, when it goes into Tibet and

Afghanistan to breed. A few individuals are said to spend the summer in

India. There are in the British Museum specimens supposed to have been

shot at Sambhar in July and Ahmednagar in June. I have never observed

this bird in India between the end of May and the beginning of September,

and am inclined to think that the above dates have been incorrectly

recorded.

XXX

THE NIGHT HERON

Some American millionaires are said to sleep for only three hours out of

the twenty-four. I do not believe this; I regard the story as a

fabrication of the halfpenny paper. But, even if it be true, the night

heron (_Nycticorax griseus_) is able to eclipse the performance. That

bird only sleeps when it has nothing better to do. It looks upon sleep as

a luxury, not a necessity. As its name implies, it is a creature of the

night; but it is equally a day bird. You will never catch it napping.

Just before sunset, when the crows, wearied by the iniquities they have

wrought during the day, are wending their way to the corvine dormitory,

the night herons sally forth from the trees (“roosts” would be a misnomer

for them) in which they have spent the day and betake themselves, in twos

and threes, to the water’s edge. As they fly they make the welkin ring

with their cries of _waak, waak_, or _quaal, quaal_—sounds which may be

likened to the quacking of a distressed duck. Having arrived at their

feeding-ground, they separate and proceed to catch fish and frogs in the

manner of the orthodox heron. After an all-night sitting, or rather

standing, in shallow water, they return to their day quarters, where they

are popularly supposed to sleep. They may possibly spend the day in

slumber when they have neither nests to build nor young to feed. I am not

in a position to deny this, never having visited a heronry on such an

occasion. I speak, however, as one having authority when I say that all

through the nesting season the night heron works harder during the hours

of daylight than the British workman does. At the present time (April)

thirty or forty night herons are engaged in nesting operations in the

tall trees that grow on the islands in the ornamental pond that graces

the Lahore Zoological Gardens, and as I visit those gardens almost daily

I have had some opportunity of observing the behaviour of our night bird

during the daytime. I may here say that night herons seem very partial to

Zoological Gardens, inasmuch as they also resort to the Calcutta “Zoo”

for nesting purposes. This is, of course, as it should be. Every

well-conditioned bird should bring up its family in a “zoo” by

preference. Had birds the sense to understand this, many of them would be

spared the miseries of captivity.

Before discoursing upon its nesting habits it is fitting that I should

try to describe the night heron, so that the bird may be recognised when

next seen. I presume that everyone knows what a heron looks like, but

possibly there exist persons who would be at a loss to say wherein it

differs from a stork or a crane. It may be readily distinguished from the

latter by its well-developed hind toe. Storks and herons are perching

waders, while cranes do not trust themselves to trees because they cannot

perch, having no hind toe to grasp with. The heron’s bill is flatter and

more dagger-shaped than that of a stork. Moreover the former possesses,

inside the middle claw, a little comb, which the stork lacks. The heron

flies with neck drawn in, head pressed against the back, and beak

pointing forwards. It never sails in the air, but progresses, like the

flying-fox, with a steady, continuous flapping motion. So much for herons

in general. To those who would learn more of these and other long-legged

fowls I commend Mr. Frank Finn’s excellent little book, entitled _How to

Know the Indian Waders_.

The night heron is considerably smaller than the common heron—the heron

we see in England, and larger than the Indian paddy bird—the ubiquitous

fowl that looks brown when it is standing and white when it is flying.

The head and back of the night heron are black, the remainder of the

upper plumage is grey, the lower parts are white. There are two or three

long, white, narrow feathers, which grow from the back of the head and

hang down like a pigtail. The eye is rich ruby-red. Young night herons

are brown with yellowish spots, and the eye is deep yellow.

Any resident of Madras may see this species if he repair to the Redhills

Tank. One of the islands in that tank supports a considerable population

of night herons and little cormorants. The former nest in the trees on

the island in July. The place is well worth visiting then. As the boat

carrying a human being approaches the islet, all the night herons fly

away without a sound. They love their young, but not so much as they love

themselves, so they leave their offspring at the first approach of the

human visitor and remain away until he turns his back on their

nesting-ground. A night heron never allows his valour to get the better

of his discretion. The nest is a platform of twigs placed anywhere in a

tree. Four pale greenish-blue eggs are laid. A heronry is a filthy place.

The possessors are, like our Indian brethren, utterly regardless of the

principles of sanitation. The whole island will be found white with the

droppings of the birds, and the unsavoury smell that emanates therefrom

would do credit to a village inhabited by _chamars_. Although they are

evil-tempered, cantankerous creatures, night herons always nest in

company. It is no uncommon thing to find half a dozen nests in the same

tree, so that the sitting birds are able to compare notes while engaged

in the duties of incubation. Both the parent birds take part in nest

construction, and, as they work by day, it is quite easy to watch the

process. They wrench small branches from trees, and, as they have only

the beak with which to grasp these, they find twig-gathering hard work.

When a twig has been secured it is dropped on to the particular part of

the tree in which the bird has thought fit to build. Forty or fifty twigs

dropped haphazard in a heap constitute the nest. The birds make a great

noise while engaged in building. Quarrels are of frequent occurrence. It

sometimes happens that two birds want the same twig; this invariably

gives rise to noisy altercation. The crows too are provocative of much

bad language on the part of the night herons. Whenever any of the crows

of the neighbourhood has nothing else to do, he says to a kindred spirit:

“Come, let us worry the night herons.” Whereupon the pair—_Arcades

ambo_—go and pretend to show the herons how to build a nest.

When, my friends, you consider the untidiness and filthiness of the

heron’s nest, you will be able to appreciate to the full the audacity of

the latest falsehood circulated by the plume trade—to wit, the egret

plucks out its nuptial plumes, which constitute the “osprey” of commerce,

and weaves these into the nest to make it more cosy; and, after the young

ones are fledged, some honest fellow visits the nest and disentangles the

plumes therefrom!

A baby heron is a disgustingly ugly creature. It is a living caricature.

Patches of long hair-like feathers are studded, apparently haphazard,

over its otherwise naked body and give it an indescribably grotesque

appearance. It looks like a bird in its dotage. If you lift a young heron

out of the nest you will probably find that his “corporation” is

distended to bursting-point, and, if you do not handle him carefully, a

half-digested frog will, as likely as not, drop out of him!

The farther north one goes the earlier in the year does the night heron

breed. In Kashmir the nesting season is in full swing in March. In the

Punjab April and May are the nesting months; in Madras the birds do not

begin to build until July; and I have seen eggs at the end of August. It

is my belief that the night heron is a migratory bird. During the winter

months not a single specimen of that species is to be seen in or about

Lahore, but they migrate there regularly every April. They disappear

again to I know not where when they have reared up their young.

XXI

THE CEMENT OF BIRD MASONS

Birds may be divided into two classes—those which build nests and those

which do not. To the latter belong the parasitic starlings and cuckoos,

which drop their eggs in the nests of other birds; those, such as

plovers, which lay their eggs on the bare ground; and those which deposit

them in holes, in the earth, in trees, in banks, or in buildings, as, for

example, the Indian roller or blue jay (_Coracias indica_).

Intermediate between the birds that build nests and those which do

not—for there are no sudden transitions, no sharply defined lines of

division in nature—are those birds which merely furnish, more or less

cosily, the ready-made holes in which they deposit their eggs. The common

myna (_Acridotheres tristis_) affords a familiar instance of this class

of birds. Some of the nest-builders are really excavators; they dig out

their nests in a tree or bank. The woodpeckers and the bee-eaters are

examples of these. The rest of the nest-builders actually construct their

nurseries. These buildings are of various degrees of complexity. Crows,

doves, birds of prey, herons, and a few other families are content with a

mere platform of sticks and twigs, which rests in the fork of a tree, or

on a ledge or other suitable surface. The birds which build primitive

nests of this description are not put to the trouble of seeking or

manufacturing any cohesive materials. It is only when the nest takes some

definite shape and form that means have to be found of binding together

the materials of which it is composed, and of attaching the whole to that

which supports the nest. In such cases the component materials are either

woven or cemented together. It is among the woven nests that we find the

highest examples of avian architecture. The homes of the weaver-bird

(_Ploceus baya_) and of the Indian wren-warbler (_Prinia inornata_) are

constructed with a skill that defies competition. But it is not with

these wonderful nests that we are concerned to-day. It must suffice to

say that woven nests have to be supported; they cannot float in the air.

There are various methods of supporting them. The nest may be firmly

wedged into a forked branch. It may be bound to its supports, as in the

case of the nest of the king crow (_Dicrurus ater_). The supporting

branches may be worked into its structure, as is done by _Prinia

inornata_. The nest may hang, as does that of _Ploceus baya_. It may be

cemented to its support, as in the case of the nests of the various

swifts; or it may rest on supporting fibres which are slung on to a

forked branch, just as a prawn net is slung on to its frame. The golden

oriole (_Oriolus kundoo_) resorts to this ingenious device.

Coming now to those nurseries in which the building materials are

cemented together, we must first consider the nests of the swallows and

swifts. These birds secrete a very sticky saliva, which quickly hardens

when it is exposed to the air. This constitutes an excellent cement.

Watch a swift working at its nest under the eaves of a house. It flies to

it with a feather or piece of straw carried far back in the angle of its

mouth, hangs itself by means of its four forwardly directed toes on to

the half-completed nest, which is stuck on to the wall of the house, and,

having carefully placed the feather or straw in the required position,

holds it there until the sticky saliva it has poured over it has had time

to harden and thus firmly glue the added piece of material to the nest.

The bits of straw, feathers, etc., may be said to constitute the bricks,

and the saliva the cement of the swift’s nest. Some swifts build their

nests exclusively of their saliva. These constitute the “edible birds’

nests” of commerce, and may be likened to houses built entirely of

cement. The martin (_Chelidon urbica_), the common swallow (_Hirundo

rustica_), and the wire-tailed swallow (_H. smithii_) construct their

nests of clay and saliva. They repair to some puddle and there gather

moist clay, which they stick on to some building, so as to form a

projecting saucer-shaped shelf. In this the eggs are laid. But nature has

not vouchsafed sticky saliva to all birds, so that many of them have to

find their cement just as they have to seek out the other building

materials they use.

The chestnut-bellied nuthatch (_Sitta castaneiventris_), which nestles in

holes in trees, fills up all but a small part of the entrance with mud

“consolidated with some viscid seed of a parasitical plant.”

The hornbills close up the greater part of the orifice of the hole in

which they nest with their droppings mixed with a little earth.

Hume informs us the rufous-fronted wren-warbler (_Franklinia buchanani_)

utilises a fungus as its cement. “In all the nests that I have seen,” he

writes, “the egg-cavity has been lined with something very soft. In many

of the nests the lining is composed of soft, felt-like pieces of some

dull salmon-coloured fungus, with which the whole interior is closely

plastered.”

The cement which is most commonly used is cobweb. I do not think that I

am exaggerating when I say that cobweb enters extensively into the

structure of the nests of more than one hundred species of Indian birds.

What birds would do without our friend the spider I cannot imagine.

The nest of some birds is literally a house of cobwebs. The beautiful

white-browed fan-tail fly-catcher (_Rhipidura albifrontata_) is a case in

point. Its nursery is so thickly plastered with cobweb as to sometimes

look quite white. It is a tiny cup that rests on a branch of a bush or

small tree, and is composed of fine twigs and roots, which are cemented

to the supporting branch and to one another by cobweb. This the bird

takes from the webs of those trap-door spiders which weave large nets on

the ground.

Utterly regardless of the feelings of the possessor of the web, the

fly-catcher takes beakful after beakful of it, and smears it over the

part of the branch on which the nest will rest. It then sticks to this

some dried grass stems or other fine material, next adds more cobweb, and

continues in this manner until the neat little cup-shaped nest is

completed. This, as I have already said, is thickly coated exteriorly

with cobweb to give it additional strength.

The sunbirds or honeysuckers make nearly as extensive use of cobweb in

nest construction as do the fan-tailed fly-catchers. Loten’s honeysucker

(_Arachnechthra lotenia_) seeks until it finds a large spider’s web

stretched horizontally across some bush; it then proceeds to build its

nursery in the middle of this. As the material is added the nest grows

heavier, and thus depresses the middle of the web until it at last

assumes the shape of a V, in the angle of which the mango-shaped nest is

situated. The nursery is thus suspended from the bush by the four corners

of the cobweb.

A spider’s web looks such a flimsy affair that it does not seem possible

that it could support a nest peopled by a number of birds. Sometimes the

nest derives additional support by being attached to other branches.

Moreover, a tiny creature such as a sunbird is almost as light as the

proverbial feather. Then cobweb is exceedingly elastic, and, considering

its attenuity, is able to support a surprising amount of weight. It

occasionally happens that the common garden spider (_Epeira diadema_) is

not able to find a _point d’appui_ to which it can attach the lower part

of its web; it then utilises a stone (which may be as much as a

quarter-inch in each dimension) as a plummet to make the nest taut. This

comparatively heavy stone hangs by a single thread.

I have sometimes amused myself by testing the strength of a strand of

cobweb stretched across a path, by hanging bits of match or other light

material on it. In one experiment a gossamer thread, thirty feet in

length, stretched across a road, bore the weight of five blades of grass

which were hung upon it. The sixth blade proved to be the last straw that

broke the camel’s back.

The strength of cobweb is proved by the fact that many of the birds that

build hanging nests use it as cement to attach them to the supports from

which they are suspended. The Indian white-eye (_Zosterops palbebrosa_)

fixes its tiny oriole-like nest to the supporting branches, not by

fibres, but by cobweb. In the same way the yellow-eyed babbler

(_Pyctorhis sinensis_), whose nest is shaped like an inverted cone,

attaches this by cobweb to the stems of the crop in which it is situated.

The common honeysucker (_Arachnechthra asiatica_), whose nest looks like

a tangle of dried twigs and other rubbish, uses much cobweb in the

construction thereof. The little nursery is suspended by means of cobweb

from some projecting branch of a bush, and the various materials which

compose it are stuck together with spider’s web; but in this case some

sticky resinous substance is usually used in addition to the cobweb.

The tailor-bird (_Orthotomous sutorius_) always uses cobweb to draw

together the edges of the leaf or leaves that compose its nest. Having

made a series of punctures along the edges of the leaf to be utilised, it

procures some cobweb, and, having attached it to one edge of the leaf,

carries the strand across to the other edge and, before attaching it to

this, pulls it so tightly as to draw the two edges together. When the

nest has taken its final shape the bird strengthens the first attenuated

strands of cobweb by adding more cobweb or some threads of cotton.

Many birds which weave their nests plaster the exterior more or less

thickly with cobweb so as to add strength to the structure.

It would be wearisome to detail all the kinds of nest into the

composition of which cobweb enters. Sufficient has been said to show that

this very useful substance is the favourite cement of bird masons.

XXXII

INDIAN FLY-CATCHERS

There exist in the Indian Empire no fewer than fifty-one species of

fly-catcher. This fact speaks volumes for the wealth of both the bird and

the insect population of India. Fly-catchers are little birds that feed

exclusively on insects, which they secure on the wing. Their habit is to

take up a strategic position on some perch, usually the bare branch of a

tree, whence they make sallies into the air after their quarry. Having

secured the object of their sortie—and this they never fail to do—they

return to their perch. A fly-catcher will sometimes make over a hundred

of these little flights in the course of an hour; the appetite of an

insectivorous bird appears to be insatiable. All fly-catchers obtain

their food in this manner, but all birds which behave thus are not

members of the fly-catcher family. As fly-catchers are characterised by

rather weak legs, and, in consequence, do not often descend to the

ground, they are of necessity confined to parts of the country well

supplied with trees. Thus it comes to pass that the great majority of

fly-catchers are found only in well-wooded hill tracts. Four or five

species, however, occur commonly in the plains. With two of these—the

glorious paradise fly-catchers (_Terpsiphone_) and the very elegant

fan-tail fly-catchers (_Rhipidura_)—I have dealt in my former books. I

therefore propose to confine myself to some of the many other species. Of

these last, the brown fly-catcher (_Alseonax latirostris_) is the one

most frequently met with in the plains. This is the most inornate of all

the fly-catchers. As its name implies, brown is its prevailing hue. Its

lower parts are, indeed, whitish, and there is an inconspicuous ring of

white feathers round the eye, but everything else about it is earthy

brown. It is the kind of bird the casual observer is likely to pass over,

or, if he does happen to observe it, he probably sets it down as one of

the scores of warblers that visit India in the cold weather. It is only

when the bird makes a sudden dash into the air after an insect that one

realises that it is a fly-catcher. The brown fly-catcher is an

Ishmaelite. It seems never to remain for long in one place, and, although

it may be seen at all times of the year, its nest does not appear ever to

have been found in this country.

A more ornamental fly-catcher which occasionally visits the plains is the

grey-headed fly-catcher (_Culicapa ceylonensis_). In this species the

head, neck, and breast are ash-coloured, the wings and tail are dark

brown, the back greenish yellow, and the lower parts dull yellow. This

fly-catcher is common both in the Nilgiris and the Himalayas. It has the

usual habits of the family. Like the majority of them it is no songster,

although it frequently emits a cheeping note. Its nest is a very

beautiful structure, a ball of moss which is attached to a moss-covered

tree or rock, more often than not near a mountain stream.

Fly-catchers usually nidificate in the neighbourhood of water, because

that element favours the existence of their insect food.

_Siphia parva_—the European red-breasted fly-catcher—is a species which

visits the plains of India in the cold weather, but not many individuals

penetrate so far south as Madras. This bird is easily recognised, since

the cock bears a strong likeness to the familiar English robin

red-breast. I may here mention that an allied species—the Indian

red-breasted fly-catcher, _S. hyperythra_—summers in Kashmir and winters

in Ceylon, but, curiously enough, it has not been recorded from the

plains of India. It would thus seem to fly from Kashmir to Ceylon in a

single night. Even so, it would be very extraordinary if an occasional

individual did not fail to perform the whole journey in so short a space

of time; therefore, this species should be watched for in South India in

spring and autumn. It is easily distinguished from allied species by a

black band which surrounds the red breast and abdomen.

As it is impossible to detail in one brief essay all the species of

fly-catcher found in the Indian hills, I propose merely to mention those

that are most common in the Nilgiris and the Himalayas, and then to make

a few observations on fly-catchers in general. In addition to the

fan-tail, the grey-headed and the brown fly-catchers, the following

species are abundant in the Nilgiris: Tickell’s blue fly-catcher

(_Cyornis tickelli_), the Nilgiri blue fly-catcher (_Stoparola

albicaudata_), and the black and orange fly-catcher (_Ochromela

nigrirufa_). In the Himalayas, the paradise fly-catcher is common in

summer at lower altitudes. Above 6000 feet elevation the following are

the species most commonly seen: the grey-headed fly-catcher, the

white-browed blue fly-catcher (_Cyornis superciliaris_), and the

beautiful verditer fly-catcher (_Stoparola melanops_), which is no mean

songster.