, X'.n\i
BIRDS
/> -'/
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
To be had of all publishers in India.
THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER.
BEHIND THE BUNGALOW •
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL
THE FIVE WINDOWS OF THE SOUL.
THEjCOMMON BIRDS
OF BOMBAY.
BY
E H A
ILLUSTRATED WITH PEN AND INK.
THAC£ER & Co., BOMBAY.
THACKER, SPINK & Co., CALCUTTA.
HIGGINBOTHAM & Co., MADRAS.
PRINTED AT THE
TIMES OF INDIA " PRESS
BOMBAY.
uib
PREFACE.
THESE papers were published first in the TIMES OF
INDIA. They are republished with some additions,
at the instigation of friends, in the hope that they
may be helpful even beyond the limits of the Bombay
Presidency ; for the common birds of Bombay are
for the most part identical with the common birds of
India.
E H A
ivISi
CONTENTS AND CLASSIFICATION.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.— INTRODUCTORY i
FIRST ORDER — RAPTORES : OR BIRDS OF PREY.
Family, Vulturida.
CHAPTER II.— THE VULTURES 9
Family, Falconidce.
CHAPTER III.— THE KITES, BUZZARDS, AND HARRIERS... 15
CHAPTER IV.— THE HAWKS, FALCONS, AND EAGLES ... 21
Family, Strigidce.
CHAPTER V.— THE OWLS 29
SECOND ORDER — INSESSORES : OR PERCHING BIRDS.
Tribe, Fissirostres.
CHAPTER VI.— THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS 35
CHAPTER VII.— THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS, AND
KINGFISHERS 42
Tribe, Scansores.
CHAPTER VIII.— THE PARROTS 49
CHAPTER IX.— THE CUCKOOS 53
CHAPTER X. — THE WOODPECKER AND THE COPPERSMITH. 57
Tribe, Tenuirostres.
CHAPTER XL— THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE 62
Tribe, Denlirostres.
CHAPTER XII.— THE SHRIKES 70
CHAPTER XIII.— THE FLYCATCHERS 76
CHAPTER XI V.— THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS. 80
CHAPTER XV.— THE BULBULS 87
CHAPTER XVI.— THE ORIOLES , 91
Vlll CONTENTS AND CLASSIFICATION.
PAGE
CHAPTER XVII.— THE ROBINS AND CHATS 97
CHAPTER XVIII.— THE WARBLERS 103
CHAPTER XIX.— THE WAGTAILS, PIPITS, AND TITS ... in
Tribe , Conirostres.
CHAPTER XX.— THE CROWS 117
CHAPTER XXL— THE MYNAS 124
CHAPTER XXIL— THE WEAVER BIRD 131
CHAPTER XXIII. —THE AMADAVATS AND MUNIAS 137
CHAPTER XXIV.— THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS, AND
LARKS 142
THIRD ORDER.— GEMITORES : OR MOANERS.
CHAPTER XXV.— THE PIGEONS AND DOVES 148
FOURTH ORDER — RASORES : OR SCRAPERS.
CHAPTER XXVI. —POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS 155
FIFTH ORDER — GRALLATORES : STALKERS.
Tribe, Pressirostres.
CHAPTER XXVII.— THE PLOVERS 161
Tribe, Longirostres.
CHAPTER XXVIII.— THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS 166
Tribe, Latitores.
CHAPTER XXIX.— THE WATERHENS, THE COOT, AND
JACANAS 173
Tribe, Cultirostres.
CHAPTER XXX.— THE HERONS 178
SIXTH ORDER.— NATATORES : OR SWIMMERS.
CHAPTER XXXL— THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND
GREBES ^4
CHAPTER XXXIL— THE GULLS AND TERNS ... , 190
INDEX OF ENGLISH NAMES.
PAGE
Adjutant 179
Amadavat, Common 138
, Green 139
Avocet 171
Babbler 82
, Wren 84
Barbet 60, 61
Bee-eater, Common 44
, Blue-tailed 45
Blackcap no
Blue-throat 102
Bulbul, Common 87
, Green 93
, Persian 90
, Red- whiskered ... 89
, White-browed 90
Bunting, Blackheaded 144
, Chestnut-headed ... 145
Butcher-bird 72
Buzzard, White-eyed 18
Cock, Jungle 56
Coot 175
Coppersmith 60
Cormorant 186
Coucal 56
Cranes .. 179
Crow, Black 120
, Grey-necked 120
Crow-pheasant 56
Cuckoo, Pied 56
, Plaintive 55
Cuckoo-shrike 74
Dabchick ... 188
Dove, Turtle 151
Drongo 73
Pucks, Wild , 185
Egret, Ashy 182
, Cattle ... 182
, Little 181
Falcon, Laggar 23
Finch-lark, Black-bellied ... 147
, Rufous-tailed ... 147
Flower-pecker 67
Flycatcher, Brown 79
, Fantailed 78
, Paradise 77
Goatsucker 42
Grebe 188
Greenshanks 169
Gulls 193
Harrier, Common 19
, Marsh 19
, Montague's 19
Hawk, Fish 26
, Sparrow 21
Heron, Blue 183
, Night 183
, Pond or Blind 180
Honey-sucker (see Sunbird)
Hoopoe 68
lora 92
Jacana, Bronze-winged ... 177
, Pheasant-tailed ... 177
Kestril ... 24
King-crow 73
, White-bellied ... 74
King-fisher, Common 46
-, Pied
-, White-breasted
Kite, Common
, Brahminy
Koel ...
48
45
16
16
54
INDEX OF ENGLISH NAMES.
Kullum 179
Lapwing, Black-sided 164
, Red- wattled ... 162
, Yellow-wattled ... 163
Lark, Common Sky 145
, Malabar 146
, Small, Crested 146
Lorikeet 52
Love-bird ... 52
Minivet 75
Munia, Black-headed 139
, Plain Brown 139
, Spotted 139
, White-backed 139
Myna, Bank ... 127
, Bengal 129
, Brahminy ••• 128
, Common 126
, Dusky 127
, Grey-headed 128
Nightjar 44
Oriole, Common 95
•, Black-headed 96
Osprey 26
Owl, Fish 33
, Screech 30
Owlet, Spotted 32
Oyster-catcher 165
Paddy-bird 180
Parrakeet, Alexandrine ... 51
, Rose-headed ... 51
, Rose-ringed ... 50
Parrots 49
Partridge 158
Pharaoh's Chicken ... ... 14
Pigeon, Common 151
> Fruit 153
Pipit, Tree 115
Plover, Golden 163
, Grey 163
Plover, Ring, or Sand 164
Quail, Bush 158
Bustard, or Button... 159
Rail, Pigmy 175
Redbreast, Tickell's *. 79
Redshanks 169
Redstart 101
Robin, Indian 98
, Magpie 99
, White-winged, Black. 101
Sandpiper, Common 168
, Spotted and Green 169
Satbhai 82
Sea Pie 165
Seven Brothers 82
Schoolboy, Idle 86
Shrike, Bay-backed 72
1 Grey 72
, Red-backed 72
Shrike-Cuckoo 74, 75
Shrike-Wood 75
Skylark 145
Snake-bird 187
Snipe 167
Snippet 168
Sparrow, Common 142
— , Yellow-throated... 144
Spoonbill 172
Starling, Rosy 129
Stint 172
Stilt 172
Storks 179
Sunbird, Common 64
, Loten's 66
, Purple 66
Tailor-Bird 105
Terns 194
Thrush, Ground 85
, Rock 81
Timla 170
INDEX OF ENGLISH NAMES.
XI
Tit, White-eyed, Grey, and
Yellow 116
Titlark 115
Turtle Dove 151
Vulture, Bengal and Long--
billed 12
, King and Scavenger 14
Wagtails, Grey 112
, Yellow and Field 113
, Pied 114
PACE
Warblers, Wren 104
— , Tree 108
, Reed no
Waterhen 173
Waxbill 138
Weaver Bird 131
Wheatear 101
Whimbrel ... ... 171
Whitethroat no
Woodpeckers 57
INDEX TO SCIENTIFIC NAMES AS GIVEN
BY JERDON.
Actitis hypoleucus
glareola
Acridotheres fuscus
gmgmianus
tristis
Acrocephalus dumetorum
stentorius
PAGE
168
169
127
127
126
no
no
/Egialitis philipensis 164
Alauda gulgula *45
malabarica 146
Alcedo bengalensis 46
Alseonax latirostris 79
Ammomanes phcenicura ... 147
Arachnecthra asiatica 66
. lotenia 66
zeylonica ... 64
Ardea cinerea 183
Ardeola lencoptera 180
Astur badius 21
Athene (or Carine) brahma. 32
Brachypternus aurantius ... 59
Budytes viridis "3
Buphus coromandus 182
Butaster teesa 18
Calobates sulphurea 113
Caprimulgus asiaticus 44
Centropus rufipennis 56
Ceryle rudis 48
Chettusia gregaria 164
Circus aeruginosus 19
cineraceus
1 macrurus
Coccystes jacobinus ..
Columba intermedia ..
Copsychus saularis
Corvus macrorhynchus
« splendens
'9
J9
56
'51
99
1 20
120
PAGE
Corydalla rufula 115
Cotyle concolor ... 38
Crocopus chlorigaster 154
Cyanecula suecica 102
Cyornis tickelli 79
Cypselus affinis 40
batassiensis • 39
melba 41
Demiegretta asha 182
Dicaeum minimum 67
Dicrurus caerulescens ... ... 74
macrocercus ( or
ater) 73
Drymoipus inornatus 108
Dumetia albogularis 84
Estrelda amandava i38
formosa 139
Eudynamys orientalis ( or
honorata) 54
Euspiza luteola 145
melanocephala ... 144
Falcojugger 23
Francolinus pictus 158
Gallinula phcenicura 174
Geocichla cyanotis 85
Graculus javanicus 186
Graucalus macei 75
Gyps bengalensis 12
indicus and pallescens. 12
Hasmatopus ostralegus ... 165
Halcyon smyrnensis 45
Haliastur indus 16
Haliaetus leucogaster 25
Herodias garzetta . ... 181
Hirundo daurica (or erythro-
pyg>a) 38
filifera 37
XIV
INDEX TO SCIENTIFIC NAMES.
PAGE
Hirundo fluvicola 41
rustica 37
Hydrophasianus chirurgus. 177
lora zeylonica (or tiphia) ... 92
Ixos luteolus 90
Ketupa ceylonensis 33
Lanius erythronotus 72
hardwickii (or vitta-
tus) 72
lahtora 72
Larus affinis (or fuscus) ,.. 193
brunneicephalus ...
hemprichi
ichthysetus
ridibundus
193
194
194
193
78
162
52
84
44
45
59
16
Leucocerca pectoralis ...
Lobivanellus goensis ...
Loriculus vernalis
Malacocercus somervillei
Merops philippensis
— viridis
Micropternus gularis ...
Milvus govinda
Motacilla alba 113
... dukkhunensis ... 113
— maderaspatana ... 114
Munia striata, &c 139
Myiophonus horsfieldii 86
Neophron ginginianus 14
Nycticorax griseus 183
Oriolus kundoo ... 95
melanocephalus ... 96
Orthotomus sutorius 105
Otocampsa jocosa 89
Otogyps calvus 14
Palaeornisalexandri(or eupa-
tria) 51
torquatus 51
rosa 51
PAGE
Pandion halisetus 26
Parra indica 177
Passer domesticus 142
flavicollis 144
Pastor roseus 129
Perdicula asiatica 158
Pericrocotus peregrinus ... 75
Petrocossyphus cyaneus ... 81
Phyllornis jerdoni 93
Picus mahrattensis 59
Pipastes agilis 115
Pitta bengalensis 85
Ploceus baya 131
Plotus melanogaster 187
Podiceps philippensis 188
Polyphasia nigra 55
Porzana pygmsea 175
Pratincola caprata 101
Prinia socialis 107
Pycnonotus haemorrhous ... 89
Pyrrhulauda grisea 147
Ruticilla rufiventris 102
Saxicola oenanthe 101
Spizalauda deva 146
Sterna bergii 194
•"•' •' • media, &c 195
Strix javanica (or flammea). 32
Tchitrea paradisi 77
Temenuchus malabaricus ... 128
pagodarum ... 128
Tephrodornis pondiceriana... 75
Thamnobia fulicata ... ... 98
Tinnunculus alaudarius ... 24
Tringa minuta 172
Turnix taigoor 160
Turtur cambayensis, &c. ... 152
Volvocivora sykesii 74
Xantholsema indica 60
Zosterops palpebrosus ... 116
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
DURING the last year or two I have been repeatedly
pressed to
write a
simple ac-
count of
the Birds
of Bom-
bay. It has
been re-
presented
to me that
there are
many who
would like
to know
the com-
mon birds
that ap-
pear in
their gar-
dens and
abouttheir
houses, to
learn their
names and
H. R. H. The Kino Crow.
something of their natures, without "collecting"
them, and that there is no book from which such
2 INTRODUCTORY.
persons can get much help. I confess that scarcely
any argument could appeal more strongly to my
nature than this. For I think that the study of
natural history fails of its finest fruit if it does
not lead us to regard living creatures generally
with a kindly and sympathetic interest which
tends to make all needless sacrifice of their lives
more and more repugnant to our feelings. The
first steps may have to be taken through blood, and
I must own that in my boyhood I was murderous
in heart, but not in hand, for I had no gun, only a
catapult ; and for this I am thankful. I seldom
killed anything, while the hours I spent in stalking
my game and watching for a chance of getting a
fair shot taught me more about the personal habits
of birds than I could have learned in any other way.
Since that I have shot a great many beautiful and
harmless birds with ever-increasing reluctance, but
there was no other means of becoming acquainted
with them. The descriptions in Jerdon and Barnes
and Oates all presuppose a specimen in your hand,
to be measured with a foot-rule and examined feather
by feather. There was no museum to which I could
resort, and it was seldom my lot to fall in with
anybody who could enlighten me if I asked, What
bird is that ? Most gladly therefore would I try to
make atonement now by helping others to know
without killing, as far as it lies in me.
But I am afraid that the kind friends who ask me to
write an account of the Birds of Bombay have a very
faint idea of the difficulties of the task. In the first
place nobody knows, till he has tried it, how difficult
a matter it is to make such an object as a bird in a
INTRODUCTORY. 3
tree recognisable by means of words. A picture
would often do it in an instant, but there are no
pictures of the birds of India, at least none worth
mentioning. I hope that the simple drawings which
head these chapters will prove usetul so far as they go.
Again, what are the Birds of Bombay ? Imagine
one undertaking to describe the human inhabitants
of Bombay. I am told that the Czar of Russia has
eight hundred subjects in our island. I suppose
that the Ameer of Afghanistan has many more, to say
nothing of the Khan of Khelat and the Akhund of
Swat. The heathen Chinee is not scarce, and I have
seen the Jap, there are certainly Persians and Turks
and Egyptians and Negroes and Burmans and
Malays and Jews of several varieties and Armenians ;
and every nation in Europe is represented. In short,
\\hatcountryisthereofwhichonecansay with any
confidence that there is not one native of it in
Bombay ? Franz Joseph Land perhaps. And the
case is pretty much the same with the feathered
population. Bombay has of course its own peculiar
resident avifauna ; but it lies between the Indian
continent on the one hand and the ocean on the
other, and receives contributions from both. A
storm at any time may toss the Frigate Bird or the
Booby on our shores, and a misguided Hornbill may
make its appearance on Malabar Hill. Then there
is a host of birds of passage which regularly visit us
every cold season, or drop in on us en passant, as
quails drop on board of a P. and O. steamer on its
way through the Mediterranean. And last, but by
no means least as an element of perplexity, there are
at all times escaped captives from the cages in the
4 INTRODUCTORY,
Crawford Market, which wander about the island in
vagabondage until the crows kill them, or settle
down and make themselves comfortable among us.
I have heard a cockatoo making the primasval forests
of Cumballa Hill echo with the joyful roar of free-
dom. A Persian Bulbul once escaped from one of
my own cages and re-appeared next morning with a
companion ! If I remember I caught them both.
Canaries of course are common. I once caught a
fine one with my hand in one of our churches, I
had better not say which, though the Bishop
and the Archdeacon of that time have both re-
tired. It came in during the service and perched
above the pulpit, where the sermon soon put
it to sleep. But the most perplexing foreigners
are those which find that the climate suits them
and make themselves at home. The Blue Java
vSparrow is an example. I should not be much
surprised if I found that bird making its nest in some
bush about Worlee or Sewree. In these circum-
stances I have decided to protect myself with the title
The Common Birds of Bombay. If anybody con-
victs me of omitting a well-known bird, I can
maintain that it is not "common " as I understand
the term. And if I succeed in making it even a little
easier for any one to take an intelligent and kindly
interest in the lives of those bright beings which do
so much to enliven our surroundings, still more if I
succeed in any measure in staying the hand of
slaughter, whether raised in the name of sport or
science, I shall have my reward.
Birds constitute the second class of the vertebrate
animals, being higher than the reptiles in that their
INTRODUCTORY. 5
blood is warm, and lower than the beasts in that they
do not suckle their young but lay eggs. There are
other points in which they differ from both. They
have no lips nor teeth, their mouths being encased
in horn and consolidated into a beak. That they
are clothed with feathers we all know, but few have
any idea of the properties of that wonderful garment.
The long, stiff feathers of the wing, called " quills,"
are little oars, or fans, for beating the air, and those
of the tail form an expanding and collapsing rudder ;
but the body clothing is of softer plumes, so con-
structed and so arranged as to combine all the
diverse qualities of all the fabrics that man has ever
woven for his own comfort or adornment. Each
feather is at its point a scale, or leaf, smooth, soft,
porous and yet waterproof ; but at the base it is
dishevelled and downy. Each keeps its place and
overlaps the next so as to form a smooth and even
surface and an unbroken pattern ; but the down is
underneath. When the bird goes to bed it shakes
up its plumage and is wrapped in an eiderdown quilt;
but startle it and in an instant every feather is pressed
firmly down and the compact little body is prepared
to cleave the air as a scale-clothed fish cleaves the
water.
But the most vital difference between birds and all
other vertebrate animals lies in the fact that their fore-
limbs are converted into organs of flight. This
handicaps them in many ways, as any one may see
for himself by watching a squirrel and a sparrow
dealing with a crust of bread : but it admits them
to a realm which is closed against fourfooted creatures.
The sky is their territory and the trees arc their
6 iNTRObijCTORV*
home. They breathe pure air, they look round them
on fields and hills and sky, and they see the beasts
and man himself crawling on the ground beneath
them. Conditions such as these modify the charac-
ters of nations and it would be foolish to suppose that
they are without effect on birds. It is from these
surely that they draw that joy of life which is their
richest inheritance, which opens the eye to beauty
and the ear to music, which expresses itself in all
grace of form and movement, and inclines spon-
taneously to love. And so, though beasts rank
above them anatomically and physiologically, birds
have in many respects a higher nature. Their wits
are quicker, their thoughts sweeter, their tastes finer
and their passions and appetites less gross. With
respect to manners and morals they stand on a higher
plane altogether. The institution of the family,
which is the most sacred thing in our own social
system, is almost unknown among beasts, but it
exists among birds in its purest form. The great
majority of them indeed are monogamous during the
nesting season, and many pair for life and become
devotedly attached to each other. Brides are won
by courtship.
In their personal habits birds are particularly tidy
and clean. Much of their time is spent in the duties,
or pleasures, of the toilet. Many of them bathe
regularly in water, while others prefer a dust bath :
some, like the common Sparrow, indulge in both as
they have opportunity. Nature gives them an entire
new suit every year, sometimes two, in which case
the summer and winter suits are often different. If
there ib any difference between the sexes it is the
INTRODUCTORY. )
male which is most beautifully, or at least most
brilliantly, dressed ; as is fit, for he is in the front
ranks, fighting and making love, while her place
is in the sweet backgrounds of life, and quietness
and modesty adorn her best. Why civilised man
has proceeded upon exactly the opposite principle
is a question for philosophers. The male bird is
generally the larger and stronger, but this rule is
reversed among the birds of prey : the mothers of
eagles need to be Amazons.
I wish to avoid everything technical as far as I can,
but some sort of classification is necessary. And I
have decided to follow that adopted by Jerdon. It is
said to be unscientific and out of date, and doubtless
it is ; but it is familiar (which is the main thing) and
all our bird literature was founded on it until lately.
Even now, though The Fauna of British India must
displace all previous publications as the standard
text-book of naturalists in India, Jerdon is not super-
seded. His three volumes contain an account of
Indian birds and their ways which has no rival yet.
Besides this, I must confess that I consider Cuvier's
classification (which Jerdon adopted with slight modi-
fications) is practically more helpful than any of the
tentative systems which are now competing for its
place. He based his arrangement almost entirely
upon the form of the beak and feet, which are the
instruments by which a bird makes its living. This
J o
is a simple and a sound principle, which we put in
practice when we recognise a Hindoo barber by the
case of instruments which he wears on his stomach,
and a coolie by his basket. In an Appendix will be
found some brief directions for the application of this
INTRODUCTORY.
principle, and the Index will show how the birds are
distributed into Orders and Tribes, or Families.
Here, we may proceed without further formality,
beginning with Cuvier's first Order, the Raptores, or
birds, of prey, which have sharp, curved talons for
seizing their game, and hooked beaks for tearing
its flesh.
CHAPTER II.
THE VULTURES
IF the city of Bombay had a tutelary bird, there is
no manner of doubt what bird that should be. I do
not know why the ancient Egyptians deified the Ibis,
but if Bombay bore the proud figure of a Vulture
rampant on her shield, everybody would know why.
Of all the unsalaried public servants who have iden-
tified themselves with this city and devoted their
energies to its welfare, no other can take a place
beside the vulture. Unfortunately the vulture has
never lent itself to the spirit of heraldry. The eagle
has, strangely enough, though the difference between
10 THE VULTURES.
the two is not very clearly marked in the popular
mind. The translators of our Bible had no notion of
it. Modern natural history has disentangled the two
names and assigned them to two very different
families of birds, the distinction between which in its
essence is just this, that, while the eagle kills its prey,
the less impatient vulture waits decently till its time
comes to die. Popular sentiment persists in regard-
ing the former as the more noble, but there can be
no question which is the more useful. It is not easy
indeed to realise to oneself the extent and beneficence
of the work carried on throughout the length and
breadth of India, from year's end to year's end, by
the mighty race of vultures. Every day and all day
they are patrolling the sky at a height which brings
half a revenue district within their ken. The worn-
out bullock falls under the yoke, never to rise again,
and is dragged off the road and left ; or the old cow,
which has ceased to be profitable and has therefore
ceased to be fed, lies down in a ditch for the last time.
Before the life has left the old body some distant
" pater-roller " has seen it, and, with rigid wings
slightly curved, is sloping down at a rate which
wipes out five miles in a few seconds. A second sees
the first and, interpreting its action, follows with all
speed. A third pursues the second, and so on till,
out of a sky in which you could not have descried
two birds half an hour ago, thirty or forty dark forms
are converging on one spot. When they get right
over it, they descend in decreasing spirals and settle
at various distances and wait for the end like
American reporters. When the end comes, if you
tire squeamish or fastidious, go away. All that will
THE VULTURES. it
corrupt, everything in short but the bones, is to be
removed from that carcase within twenty-four hours,
and the vultures have taken the contract to do it.
Such work cannot be made artistic and the vulture is
not an sesthete. That bald head and bare neck are
not ornamental, but they mean business ; they are
the sleeves tucked up for earnest work. It is a merci-
ful and, I suppose, a necessary provision of nature,
that every creature gets reconciled to its task and is
able even to take pleasure in that which would be
painful to others. The vulture enjoys the full benefit
of this provision. It is in fact an enthusiast in its
profession, and these funeral wakes become scenes
of riotous and ghoulish glee to which I confess
that even philosophic reflection fails to impart moral
beauty. The gourmands jostle and bump against
each other, and chase each other round the board
with long, ungainly hop and open wings. One
has no sooner thrust its head well into the carcase
than another leaps upon its back with loud laughter.
Two get hold of opposite ends of a long strip of offal
and dance before each other with wings outstretched.
And the cackling and grunting and roaring that go
on all the while may be heard for half a mile. When
darkness overtakes the revellers some of them have
so shamefully over-eaten themselves that they cannot
rise from the ground and are forced to spend the
night where they are. They seem to be quite safe,
however. The jackal is not a fastidious feeder, but
it draws the line at vultures. These scenes used not
very long ago to be enacted regularly on the Flats,
where the carcases of horses and cattle were skinned
and left.
12 THE VULTURES.
The vultures that one sees in such numbers on
Malabar Hill belong to two species, which are easy
enough to distinguish when once one's attention has
been turned to the difference between them. The
commoner of the two, the White-backed or Bengal
Vulture (Gyps bengalensis), is a smokey-black bird,
with a band of white extending nearly the whole
length of each wing on the under side. This band
is broken by the dark body, and that serves to
distinguish the bird at a glance. The other species is
the Long-billed Vulture (Gyps pallescens ). Jerdon
confounded it with another species and called \\.<Gyps
indicus. Its general colour is brown, darker or
lighter according to age, sometimes almost whitey-
brown ; but, however light the under parts may be,
body and wings are alike. The two species are about
the same size and larger than one would suspect who
has only seen them at a distance. A good specimen
will measure over seven feet from tip to tip of the
wings. There is one curious difference in their
habits. The Long-billed Vulture breeds always on
high cliffs, while its Bengal brother is content to
build its nest on any tree big enough to bear the
weight of such a ponderous edifice. I have seen .a
single mango tree groaning under several nests.
Each nest contains one egg, generally white (if
clean), but sometimes blotched with brown. The
breeding season extends over the greater part of the
year and eggs may be found from September to
March at least. Most young birds are hungry and
clamorous, like the daughters of the horseleach,
crying give, give, from dawn till dusk. But the
young vulture learns patience early. Its mother
THE VULTURES. 13
leaves it before sunrise and it sits hour after hour,
motionless and noiseless, waiting for her return.
Noon may be on before it descries her, a mere speck
in the sky, but growing bigger every moment as she
slopes down towards the nest. At last, with heavy
flapping, she lets herself down, and great is the cack-
ling, for though she carries nothing in her beak, the
youngster knows that she is loaded. What follows
is not polite. In plain language she disgorges great
lumps of meat and thrusts them into its mouth. A
crow sits close by, mindful of the proverb that there's
many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. A vulture
cannot feed her young in any other way than this,
for the carcase on which she dined may be ten miles
away. And indeed I never saw a vulture carrying
food, or anything else, except a stick for its nest, and
that in its beak. All other birds of prey carry with
their feet, but this is impossible to the vulture because
it is incapable of swooping and cannot even rise off
the ground without taking a run. Once fairly in the
air, no bird surpasses the majesty of its flight.
The question has often been hotly discussed whether
birds can sail without flapping their wings. The
difficulty originated of course with somebody of
that unfortunate class who must reason about
questions of fact instead of looking. He demons-
trated that such a feat was impossible. The vultures
kept en doing it all the same, and any one may
watch them. For hours together they will sail in
circles, or rather in spirals, without the slightest
motion of their wings, beyond trimming them to
the wind, like the sails of a boat. Of course there
must be a wind,
14 THE VULTURES.
There are two other kinds of vultures which may
occasionally be seen in Bombay. One is the King-
Vulture (Otogyps calvus), a royal bird, not indeed
larger than the others, but of nobler aspect and
prouder character. It appears singly, or with its mate,
and will not consort with the herd. When it comes
to a carcase, the others have to stand by till it has
dined. There is no difficulty in recognising this
species by its deep black colour, relieved only by two
pure white patches on its thighs and by the blood-
red tint of its bare head and neck. It builds on some
solitary tree and lays a single white egg.
Our fourth vulture is that foul bird known as
Pharaoh's Chicken, and by other more opprobrious
nicknames. Its title in science is Neophron ginginia-
mis. It is one of the commonest birds about Poona and
everywhere on the plains of the Deccan, but seldom
visits the coast. I have, however, seen a pair on
more than one occasion about the Flats. It is a
white bird, not much bigger than a kite, with only
the quill feathers of the wing black. Its bill is long
and thin, its naked face yellow, and its tail wedge-
shaped. Its neck is not bare, but clothed with long,
rusty-white feathers, pointing backwards. It does
not stand upright, like the true vultures, but carries
its body like a duck and steps like a recruit.
By these signs you may know Pharaoh's Chicken.
It makes its shabby nest, of sticks, rags and
rubbish, on trees, ledges of public buildings, or
anywhere, about March, and lays two white eggs,
more or less blotched with brown. For the first
year the young birds are brown all over and look
rather like mis-shapen kites,
CHAPTER III.
THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS.
BY an easy and natural ascent we pass from the
Vultures to the Kite. This bird also prefers to he
saved the trouble of catching its prey, but it has not
fallen so far from the freebooting traditions of its
Harriers
stock as to relish the idea of sitting down upon a
defunct cow for its meals. It turns its attention
therefore to such corpses as may be carried away and
consumed in private, to Avit, rats, mice, small birds
and even fishes. To find these it must sail at a
lower level than the vulture, and it has no equal at
1 6 THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS.
that easy, undulating motion, which glides down a
street, tops a house, dips into a lane, rounds a
corner, all with the same effortless grace. There is
more steering required for these evolutions than for
the circling of a vulture, hence the Kite carries an
expansive, forked tail, a kind of twin helm, which
it manages with a skill that is perfectly beautiful.
All the while you may see its head turning this way
and that, as it scans every corner with its keen eyes
for anything that may be " lifted." It does not insist
that life shall be extinct. Any bird or little animal
which is sickly, wounded, or young enough to be
picked off the ground with a swoop, is welcome.
Chicks not over a month old are particularly eligible,
as everybody knows to his sorrow who has tried to
keep poultry in India. When a Kite becomes a
confirmed chicken-eater there is nothing to be done
but to shoot it, which is a pity, for they deserve to
be protected. The quantity of dead rats, scraps of
offal, and other refuse which they remove from our
streets and the precincts of our outhouses in the
course of the year, must be enormous. The Crows
offer their services for the same work, and I would
not underrate their usefulness, but a Crow sitting
down to breakfast on a dead bandicoot in the middle
of the street is itself an offence. The Kite removes
the nuisance, and what it does with it afterwards is
no concern of ours.
We have two kinds of Kites in Bombay, the
Common (Milvus gomnda) and the Brahminy
(Haliastur indus) , so called because it seems to be
a bird of higher caste. It is smaller than the other
and very much handsomer. Its head, neck and
THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS. 17
breast are pure white, while all the rest of the
plumage is of a rich chestnut colour. Young birds
are of a more earthy hue and have not white heads,
but even in that stage they can be distinguished at
a glance from Common Kites by their tails, which
are not forked, but rounded. For the avoidance of
family brawls nature seems to have assigned separate
portions to these two birds, giving the refuse of the
land to the one and the refuse of the water to the
other. It is not that one eats flesh and the other
fish. Nothing that goes overboard from a ship
comes amiss to the Brahminy, and the Common
Kite will snatch fish from the very basket on a
woman's head. But the one likes to pick its food off
the water and the other off the ground. So the one
haunts the harbour, while the other takes charge of
the bazaar. I do not say that they never invade
each other's preserves. Both build on trees about
the beginning of the year, and generally lay two
eggs, which are white, spotted with reddish-brown.
The Common Kites go to Poona, with Government,
for the monsoon months. In Bombay there are
always some that do not manage to get away, but
down the coast I have looked in vain for a Common
Kite from the beginning of June till the end of
August. When they return there is for some weeks
much squealing and quarrelling until the boundaries
of each one's beat are fixed and the usurpations of
crows and Brahminies repelled. The Brahminies
do not go away. They like water even in the form
of rain.
The Buzzards and Harriers follow close upon the
Kites. This is not exactly Jerdon's order, but one of
1 8 THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS.
my own which seems suited to that outside view of birds
that we are taking. The Vultures and Kites are the jack-
als and hyaenas of the bird world. The Buzzards and
Harriers are a step higher. They like fresh meat and
will have their prey alive, but, not possessing strength
or speed to master any very noble quarry, they turn
their attention chiefly to reptiles and creeping things.
A Buzzard's idea of life is to sit upon a pole, or on
the top of a small tree, commanding a good expanse
of grass land, and to watch for a field mouse, or a
lizzard, or even a fat grasshopper. If you see a
biggish, untidy hawk, of a sandy-brown colour more
or less dashed with whitish, spending the morning
in this way, you may put it down as Butaster teesa,
the White-eyed Buzzard, which is the only member
of that branch of the family often seen in Bombay.
Even it is not common, except in famine years, for
Bombay contains very little of that kind of grassy
land which suits it. In the Deccan it is everywhere.
The Harrier is a more frequent visitor to our island,
and it is not a bird that one can pass without wanting
to know what it is. There is something stylish in
the get-up of a Harrier, and also something unique.
It is not like any other bird that you meet with on
land. On the sea you may find something to compare
with it, for widely as the anatomist is obliged to
separate them, I can imagine a classification in which
the Harriers and the Gulls would form one family.
They are wonderfully alike in the life that they lead
and alike in the qualities which fit them for it. As
the unwearied Gull ranges over the ocean and pounces
on the careless fish, so the Harrier ranges from
morning till night over hill and plain and drops on
THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS. 1 9
the unlucky young lark or incautious quail. If it
alights, it alights on the ground, but the sole of
this bird's foot does not seem to require much rest.
Long-winged and light-bodied, it skims along the
grass and skirts the bush, dips to the hollow and rises
to the mound, as if it knew some charm to cancel the
laws of gravitation. The sexes of the common
Harrier are so unlike that no one who did not know
would suspect their relationship. The male is like a
Gull even in colour, pale blue-grey on all the upper
parts and white underneath. The female is a dark,
umber-brown bird, mottled with reddish, the under
parts being spotted or dashed with reddish on a white
or pale ground. The lady is larger than her lord, as
is the fashion among hawks. I am referring to the
Common or Pale Harrier (Circus macrurus ).
Montague's Harrier (Circus cineraceiis ) is very like
it in both sexes on a passing view, and either species
may be seen occasionally in Bombay, for they are
very common all over India in the cold season.
They arrive about October and depart in March or
April to colder regions, where they will lay their eggs
and bring up their young on the ground, strange
hawks that they are.
These birds have a relation called the Marsh
Harrier (Circus ceruginosus), which leaves the dry
land to them and devotes its energies to swamps,
tanks and all shallow waters ; a bird well cursed of
sportsmen, for though its chief business is with
frogs, it never refuses a wounded snipe or duck.
What is almost more irritating is that, as it advances,
slow-flapping, over rice-field or rushy marsh, every
snipe takes wing. In the air they have no reason to
2O THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS.
fear it, but they will not risk being surprised among
the grass. I am afraid that with the ordinary Bombay
sportsman the Marsh Harrier generally passes for a
Kite ; but it is a smaller and altogether flimsier bird,
and is also distinctly darker in colour. Besides, the
top of its head is usually white. Young birds, how-
ever, want this mark : they are dark-brown all over.
In old age, again, the Marsh Harrier assumes a very
handsome dress, in which nobody would recognise it
for the same bird without an introduction. The
shoulders, part of the wings, and the tail, are then of
a fine, silvery, grey colour, and the rest is dark-brown,
except the head, throat and breast, which are light-
reddish. Birds in this plumage are rare, but once in
a year or so I meet one. I well remember how the
first puzzled me. Like its cousins, the Marsh Harrier
is a winter visitant to this country, and in times now
almost ancient, when the Flats were inundated every
monsoon and did not dry for months after, it was very
fond of Bombay. Things are changing sadly, but
from Mahaluxmee station northwards and westwards
there is still ground on which it can find a living.
CHAPTER IV.
HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES.
THE princes of the house of the birds of
do not
find much
to tempt
them to
Bombay,
with the
exception
of the In-
dian Spar-
rowHawk,
which will
be wher-
ever there
are spar-
rows. Not
that spar-
row meat
is better
than that
of larks or
b u 1 b u Is,
or other
small
birds, but
prey
Sparrow Haivk.
a community of sparrows, at ease in the
blished security of their urban life, offers
esta-
rare
22 HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES.
chances to an assassin of the Sparrow Hawk's
methods. It never pursues and rarely soars. Noise-
lessly it glides into your garden, and plunging into
the middle of some thick tree, stands bolt upright,
taking in the situation. If its arrival has been un-
detected, the chances are that a chirpy little company
will be feeding in some open space, or better still,
engaged in one of those social squabbles which
occupy so much of every sparrow's time. Just when
they are in the thickest of it, the enemy is in the
midst of them, and has plunged its sharp talons into
the nearest. A moment more and it is flying swiftly
over the trees, quite callous to the piteous screams
of its captive, which will not last long. But happily
for the little birds, the Sparrow Hawk does not always
succeed in arriving undetected. Some lively bulbul,
or wide-awake myna, catches sight of the detested
shadow and gives a shrill cry of warning, and every
little bird dives into the nearest bush, where it can
dodge the enemy as a small boy dodges a big one
round the dining table. It is remarkable that, though
each species of bird has its own language, the warn-
ing signal of any one is understood by all. It is
phonetic and needs no interpretation. I am often in-
formed of the passage of a bird of prey overhead simply
by hearing the cry of " Ware hawk " passed from bird
to bird about me. The Sparrow Hawk is just about
the length of a pigeon, but it is decidedly a smaller
bird. There is more tail and less body. The colour
of the upper parts ranges from dusky-brown to slatey-
gray according to age ; the under parts are whitish,
spotted with brown, or, at a later age, closely barred
with reddish fawn. The wings and tail are dusky-
HAWKS, FALCONS ANtf EAGLES. $$
barred, and this is generally a conspicuous mark if
the bird flies overhead. But to try to make out
hawks by their colour is at the best a short road to
despair. Naturalists learn to recognise them as
David's watchman recognised the courier who
brought tidings of the victory over Absalom : — " His
running is like the running of Ahimaaz, the son of
Zadok." Every bird of prey has its own character,
some trick of flight, some peculiarity of attitude when
at rest, something in its figure and proportions which
serves to distinguish it decisively. The Sparrow
Hawk flies with a few rapid strokes of the wings and
then a gliding motion, and this, together with its
short, rounded wings and long tail, distinguishes
it from any other common bird of prey. I learn of
its presence oftener by the ear than the eye. Its
sharp, impatient, double cry arrests attention among
all other bird-voices. The Sparrcnv Hawk makes
its nest in a tree in the hot season and lays three or
four white eggs.
The Falcons have longer and more sharply pointed
wings than the hawks and their flight is fierce and
very swift. They resort to no surprises, like the
Sparrow Hawk, but give chase to their prey in the
open sky and fairly hunt it down. The Peregrine
Falcon, which has a peculiar fondness for wild ducks,
is not uncommon about the coast and doubtless often
flies over Bombay, but there is only one species
which really inhabits the island, and that is the
J.aggar Falcon (Falco Jugger). It finds living cheap
and good in our city, for it is partial to a diet of
pigeons. A wild pigeon, pursued by one of these
birds, once tumbled into my house in such a panic
24 HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES.
of fear that it almost allowed me to pick it up. Many
years> ago a pair of Laggars used to have their head-
quarters, and perhaps their nest, at the University
vTower, and I sometimes see one there still. They
build in January or February, on large trees, cliffs,
or high buildings, and lay three or four eggs so
thickly spotted and blotched with reddish-brown
that sometimes there is little of any ground colour
.visible.
There is one other Falcon which must be mentioned,
namely, the Kestril, which is very common all over
India in the cold season and will be met with wherever
there is open, grassy ground, like the Bombay Flats.
It is about the size of the Sparrow Hawk and more
easily recognised than most hawks by its colour.
The back and wings are chestnut, or almost brick-
red, but the quills are black and the tail is gray.
The contrast is^ striking and unmistakable. The
under parts are light-buffy, spotted with brown.
The Kestril is also distinguished by its peculiar habit
of hovering in air when looking for its prey of grass-
hoppers, lizzards, mice and larks. The Duke of
Argyll has devoted three pages of " The Reign of
Law " to an exposition of this performance. A few
pairs of Kestrils seem to spend the year in India,
making their nests on high cliffs on the mountains,
but the majority of those which we see in the cold
season are tourists. In Barnes' book the Kestril
appears as Cerchneu tinnunculus, but I am glad to
see tha,t Mr. Blandford has restored Jerdon's name,
Tinnunculus alaudarius.
To the- lay mind the word Eagle conveys the idea
of a .royal bird of gigantic size and noble aspect,
HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES. 25
which has its eyrie on some inaccessible mountain
cliff, from which it descends to carry off lambs
and occasionally babies. This is the Eagle of the
poets :
He clasps the crag with hooked hands,
Close to the Sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
I need scarcely say that the naturalist classes a
good many birds as Eagles which are not quite so
grand. But even the least noble of them requires
more than Bombay can afford. The handsome
Crested Hawk-eagle, so common in the surrounding
districts, may visit us sometimes, but I have not seen
it. There is one, however, which we may fairly
claim, and to my thinking it is one of the very
noblest of the race. I mean the Sea Eagle (Haliaetus
leucogaster). It is exceedingly common on this west
coast, and I know of at least one eyrie not ten miles
from Bombay, so the sea on both sides of our island
is well within its range. It needs little description
to make it recognisable. Though smaller than a
vulture, it is larger than any other bird of prey that
comes our way. Viewed from below the whole bird
is snowy-white, with the exception of a broad black
border on the wings and the tail. The back and
upper parts of the wings are of a fine slatey-grey
colour. But further even than you can make out
its colours you may know the Sea Eagle by its flight.
When it sails, as it does most majestically, it does
not carry its wings horizontally, like a kite or vulture,
26 HAWKS, FALfcONS AND EAGLES.
but inclined upwards, so that the figure of the whole
bird is like a very flat V. The Sea Eagle lives
chiefly on sea serpents. They are forced to come to
the surface frequently to breathe and are more easily
caught than fishes. They are all venomous, but the
Eagle does not mind that. The fact is that a sea
snake is so utterly helpless out of water that, when
clutched by the middle and borne away through the
air, it can do nothing but dangle like a string. The
Sea Eagle makes an enormous nest of sticks in
a tree and uses it year after year, till all the ground
under it is thickly sown with the bones of snakes and
and fishes. On the mainland the tree selected is
generally a very high one, but on small, solitary
islands I have seen nests scarcely fifteen feet from
the ground. About November two eggs are laid, of
a greenish-white colour, and as the young ones grow
up there is great ado about satisfying their voracious
appetites. In a nest I visited one January, with only
a single young one, I found a fresh fish 9 or 10 inches
long and a half-eaten snake. For months after they
leave the nest the young follow their parents about,
crying, like the daughters of the horseleach, " Give,
give," and the loud and harsh kak, kak, kcik, from
which the bird gets its native name Kakan, may be
heard all day.
Another water bird must come in here, though the
latest investigations into its inside seem to convict it
of being half an owl. I mean the Osprey, or Fish
Hawk (Pandion halicetus). It is not a resident with
us, but comes for the cold season, when it may be
seen all along the sea coast and on every large river.
The Osprey is an exceedingly handsome bird in the
HAWKS, FALCONS AN£ EAGLES. 27
hand, but when seen at a distance it has nothing of
the imposing aspect of the Sea Eagle. In fact, one
who has not been accustomed to notice birds may
easily pass it by as some vulgar fowl of the kite sort.
In the Ratnagiri district I have seldom met a
native who could give me a name for it. Yet the
Osprey, when once you know it, is not to be con-
founded with anything else. There it sits on the
point of a fishing stake, a dark-brown bird with a
white cap, the breast and under parts also white, but
interrupted by a necklace of brown beads ; there is
nothing else like it. And when it flies it is equally
peculiar : its wings are very long, and it beats the air
rapidly with the points of them. And if you are still
in doubt, the matter is settled when it suddenly closes
its wings and from a height of forty or fifty feet
falls headlong into the water. That is one of the finest
sights I know. With a tremendous splash the sea
receives the bird and closes over it, and a ring
of expanding waves starts from the spot where
it perished. But a second later it reappears, and,
lifting itself and a great fish out of the heaving
water, shakes the drops off its shoulders with a
peculiar shrug and hies to a favourite rock, white
with the remains of many fish dinners. This is
a marvellous feat, especially when you remember
that, like all birds of prey, the Osprey strikes with
its feet and not with its beak. The fishes which
it catches are sometimes so heavy that it can scarcely
carry them to the nearest land. It is often pursued
and forced to deliver up its well earned booty by its
more powerful, but less plucky and skilful, neigh-
bour, the Sea Eagle.
28 HAWKS, FALCONS AND EAGLES.
I have said that the Osprey is a cold season visit-
ant. I have myself seen one, however, in the month
of August, and I suspect that a few pairs remain and
rear their young on this coast.
CHAPTER V.
OWLS.
OWLS were classed by Cuvier with eagles, hawks
and vul-
tures, and
J e r d o n
fol lowed
him, as all
the old na-
turalists
did. More
careful ex-
amination
of their
anato m y
has shown
that they
difTerwide-
ly from
all other
birds of
prey in
many re-
spects, and
resemble
parrots ; so they are now placed by most in an order
by themselves, mid-way between the hawks and
30 OWLS.
the parrots. The outward and visible characteris-
tics of this order are a short, parrot-like beak, the
outer toe reversible (in parrots it is permanently
reversed), very large eyes directed forwards, and
uncommonly well developed ears. They make their
nests in holes and lay white eggs like parrots.
Their plumage is peculiarly soft, even the quills,
so that they fly noiselessly. If you want more,
I may tell you that there is no ambiens muscle,
but basypterigoid processes are present. On the
other hand, the accessory femoro-caudal and the
semitendinosus and the accessory semitendinosus
are wanting. Now all this is very important and
not to be laughed at. These solemn words were
not invented only to bamboozle the unlearned, but
represent facts in the plan on which the frame of an
owl is constructed. And the question on which these
facts bear is more than curious. Expressed in popular
language the question is this. Is the owl only a
weak-eyed hawk that cannot bear the light of day,
or is it a bold and bad parrot which has taken to
night-walking and murder ? There is a great parrot
in Australia which has taken, within recent years, to
the extremely reprehensible practice of killing sheep
by fastening on them and tearing out their livers.
However, all such questions, fascinating though they
be, are outside of our present scope. We are con-
cerned with the outward aspect and habits of the two
or three kinds of owls which are domiciled in
Bombay.
The Screech Owl is more common in our island
than in any other part of India with which I am
acquainted. This statement may surprise people
OWLS. 31
who have lived for twenty years in Bombay without
seeing one, but the Screech Owl does not ordinarily
put itself much in the way of being seen. A dark ob-
ject, like a Flying Fox, passing overhead as you drive
home from dinner, and a loud, harsh, husky screech,
suggesting sore throat and loss of voice, are all the
indications you will commonly have of its presence.
But should a pair take up their residence in any
deserted building, or old ruin, in your neighbour-
hood, then you will know more about them. I often
wonder what the Screech Owls did before man was
created, for they cannot get on without him now. If
he did not build churches with steeples and bel-
fries, and forts and castles with towers, and barns
with roomy lofts, where would they live? In this
Presidency they are under deepest obligations to the
Portuguese. Under one of the remaining walls of an
ecclesiastical ruin in Bassein Fort Mr. Phipson and I
once noticed the ground glittering with small white
bones. We gathered a handful of them and brought
them home for examination, and could scarcely be-
lieve in ourselves or each other when they proved
to consist chiefly of the jaw-bones of muskrats !
In a high niche of that old wall a worthy pair of
Screech Owls had, for who knows how many years,
brought up an annual family of 3, 4, or 6 insatiable
owlets on this nutritious food, varied only with
an occasional house rat or field mouse. As is
well known, owls swallow their prey whole, and
after digesting all that is digestible, throw up the
bones and hair rolled up into little balls. Why
the bones we found were chiefly jaw-bones I cannot
tell, unless the parent birds were in the habit of
32 OWLS.
snipping off the heads of little animals as delicacies
for their offspring and consuming the bodies them-
selves.
I need not describe the Screech Owl. It is just the
same bird as from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
" does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bovver,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.
Specimens from different parts of the world do
indeed differ a little, and Jerdon described the Indian
bird as a distinct species under the name Strix
javanica, but in the Fauna of British India, as I am
glad to see, it appears under the name given by
Linnaeus to the Barn Owl of Europe, Strix flammea.
Our second owl is a very different character. Repu-
diating all the austere, exclusive and mystical ways
of its race, and encumbered with no superfluous
solemnity, the Spotted Owlet (Carine brama} makes
itself one of the most familiar objects of Indian life.
It does not wait for the darkness of night, but
appears before the sun has fairly set, and occasionally
gives us a look even in the middle of the day. Who
does not know the little Punchinello, its unfailing
vivacity, its inimitable drolleries, and the volubility of
its eloquence. Often, sitting at the door of my tent at
dusk and listening to that torrent of squeak and gibber
and chatter, I have wearied myself with surmising
what could be the meaning of it all. It seems to be
conversational or controversial, for there are always
two engaged in it and both speak at once. Perhaps
it is a domestic quarrel, but the character of the
Spotted Owlet almost forbids that idea. He is truly,
in the language of the tombstones, an affectionate
OWLS. 33
husband and fond father. Rarely will you see him
twenty yards from his spouse. If she flies across the
garden to another tree, he waits a few seconds, then
flies across too and sits by her side. And never will
you see a third in the party, except it be their own olive
branches, of which there may be four. These appear
about April, and are the drollest little beings im-
aginable. They all live happily together in a hole
in some old tree, and if you tap the tree at any
hour of the day, a puzzled, round face will appear
at the hole and ask more plainly than in words what
you want. Then the owner of the face will dart out and
sit on a branch and begin bowing to you with sarcastic
effect. A hole in the roof of the house, or anywhere
else, will do as well as one in a tree, if it is roomy
and comfortable. The Owlet is very promiscuous in
its diet. I have seen it hawking flying ants from its
perch on a telegraph wire, darting out after them and
catching them in its feet, and if a mouse or a lizzard
goes by, it will treat that in the same way. Mr.
Steuart Baker says that it kills little bats, not catching
them on the wing, but pulling them out of their
hiding places.
Besides these two species it is not unlikely that the
great, horned, Fish Owl (Ketupa Ceylonensis) may be
seen in Bombay about such places as Worlee or
Sion, but I have never met with it. It is called the
Fish Owl because it is generally found near water and
is supposed to feed principally on fish and frogs and
crabs, but I have seen one stoop on a hare. It had
actually clutched the hare when my appearance divert-
ed it. It has a ghostly hoot, a hoo, hoo-hoo, far-reach-
ing but coming from nowhere in particular. When it
5
34 OWLS,
sits on the top of a native house, uttering this dismal
sound, the devil is walking about inside, marking
somebody for death. I know this, because the Hamal
told me.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS.
WE have done with the Birds of Prey now, and
come to
Cuvier ' s
second
order,
?'?£., the
Insessores
or Perch-
ing Birds,
which in-
elude s
more than
two-thirds
of all crea-
tures that
go clad in
feathers.
All "com-
mon or
ga rde n"
birds be-
long to
this order;
fowls and House Swift and red-backed Swallow.
turkeys and ducks and waterfowl are excluded
from it. Jerdon divides it into certain Tribes
according to the form of the beak, Each Tribe
36 THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS.
is again divided into Families and Sub-families,
with which, however, we need not trouble ourselves
here. The first Tribe is the Fissirostres, or gape-
mouthed birds. They are rather a heterogeneous
lot, unlike in many points, but they have one family
bond, namely, a mouth that gapes from ear to
ear and gives them a peculiar facility in gulping
down the flies and flying insects on which they
all feed. First among them come the Swallows and
Swifts, to which I will devote this paper. I am
afraid that the distinction between a Swallow and a
Swift is not generally present to the popular mind ;
but they are separated by very radical differences,
of which, however, I need mention only those that are
most obvious outwardly. One is that in the foot of a
Swift all the four toes are turned forwards. It is,
in fact, like a human hand without a thumb. Now
observe the consequences. Such a foot cannot grasp,
ergo a Swift cannot perch, ergo a twig or a telegraph
wire offers it no resting place. If it gets tired
it must go to bed. But a bird that lives on the
midges in the air cannot afford to stay by its bedside.
It must range far and wide. So it cannot afford
to get tired. Therefore a Swift learns to spend
the night in its nest and the day on its wings.
Wonderful wings they need to be and are. They
are so long that, when closed, they extend far beyond
the tail, and they are worked quite differently
from the wings of even a Swallow. As a Swallow
darts along, its wings almost close against its
sides at every stroke, and it looks like a pair of
scissors opening and shutting. Now a Swift never
closes its wings in this way. It whips the air rapidly
THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS. 37
with the points of them, but they are always extended
and evenly curved from tip to tip, like a bow,
the slim body of the bird being the arrow. I have
dwelt on this at some length because it is by far the
plainest outward difference between a Swift and
a Swallow.
I reckon that two Swifts and at least four Swallows
may be included among the Common Birds of
Bombay (Hiriindo rustled). First comes our own
familiar English Swallow, which spends the winter
with us and the summer with our families ; at least, it
is pleasant to fancy so, though I am afraid that the line
of migration does not lie exactly from England to
India However that may be, passengers on their way
home in the month of May are often joined in the Red
Sea, or the Mediterranean, by a Swallow travelling
the same way, which spends a night perhaps in the
rigging, then tires of such sluggish progress and goes
on alone. It returns to India in September or October,
and is tolerably common in Bombay all the cold sea-
son. I need not describe it.
Another purely Indian species, sufficiently like the
English bird to be mistaken for it by a careless
observer, is the Wire-tail Swallow (Hirundo filifera),
which is also found in Bombay and loves to course
up and down wet, grassy ditches. It is a splendid
bird. The upper parts are dark, glossy, "steel blue,"
gleaming in the sun, the top of the head is rich,
rusty red, and the under-parts are as white as a shirt
front fresh from the dhobie — I mean from a laundry.
But its most distinctive mark is the tail, which is not
long and forked, like the tail of the English Swallow,
but short and almost square, with the outermost
3§ TriE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS.
feather on each side prolonged for four or five inches
and as thin as a fine wire. This bird makes its " clay
built nest" in the hot season, or the beginning of the
monsoon, not so often about the dwellings of man as
about his other works, bridges, for example, and
wells, and especially road culverts. It likes to be
near water. It usually lays three prettily speckled
eggs.
But by far the commonest of the whole family in
this Presidency is the Red-backed Swallow (Hirundo
erythropygia ; Jerdon calls it dauricd). It is especially
abundant about hilly or rocky country. Just at the
beginning of the cold season, in the morning,
one comes upon them in some places in such numbers
that the air feels overcrowded and they jostle each
other on the telegraph wires. The upper parts of the
Red-backed Swallow, including the wings and tail,
are black, excepting only the sides of the head
and the "small" of the back, which are light, rusty
red. The under-parts are white. The whole bird,
especially when young, looks dingy by comparison
with the Wire-tail. The tail is deeply forked. This
species also builds a mud nest in the hot season,
under some bridge or overhanging rock, or a ledge
in any building not regularly, inhabited ; but its
architecture is eccentric. The egg chamber is glo-
bular, and the entrance to it is by a neck as long
as the bird has leisure to make it. Barnes says that
the bird goes on lengthening the neck after the eggs
are laid. There are usually three white eggs.
Our fourth swallow is the Dusky Crag Martin.
Jerdon called it Cotyle concolor, but that has been
improved upon, and it appears in Barnes as
THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS. 39
Ptyoprogne concolor. The first word ought to be
hooted down, but concolor is good, for the bird is of
one colour, and that is the colour of smoke. There
is a little, round, white spot on each feather of the
tail, but this is hardly noticeable. The Crag Martin
loves rocks and makes its nest on them, under
some overhanging ledge ; the material is of course
mud, with feathers for a warm lining. The season
is either just before or just after the monsoon,
and it lays three or four white eggs, speckled with
brown. It is common about Malabar Hill and
spends much of its time flying up and down the face
of the cliffs under The Ridge. It is not remarkable
for swiftness or grace of flight. In fact, I should not
say that it was remarkable for anything. It is a
commonplace bird.
But the most abundant and familiar of this whole
family in Bombay itself is the Palm Swift (Cypselus
batassiensis), which in other parts of t{ie Presidency
is a very rare bird. The reason may be found in
its name. It cannot live without palm trees. Any
palm will not do ; it requires the Brab, or Tar, palm ;
for it cannot think of any situation for its nest except
one of the wrinkles on the underside of the broad leaf
of this tree. I have indeed seen a pair trying to ac-
commodate themselves about a cocoanut tree, but they
were in difficulties. As may be inferred, the Palm
Swift is a bird of small intellect, a feeble creature
indeed in all respects. Even its flight is feeble for
a Swift, and it seldom wanders far from home. Conse-
quently it is an unknown bird in the Deccan general-
ly and in large tracts of the Konkan, and if ever you
do see it you may safely lay odds that there is a Brab
4^ TtiE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS.
palm within a mile of you. I have tested this. In
Bombay the Brab is one of the commonest trees, and
therefore the Palm Swift is one of the commonest
birds. It is a slim bird, with long, narrow wings,
and a thin, deeply-forked tail, which opens out when-
ever the bird turns suddenly in the air. Its colour is
a brownish-smokey, rather lighter on the under-parts.
As I have said, its flight is comparatively feeble, but
it is a true Swift, spending the whole day on the wing
without apparent effort, and flying much higher than
the Swallows generally do. Its nest is a small,
shallow cup, made of feathers worked up with a
whitish substance like isinglass, which is really the
saliva of the bird. All Swifts use this substance in
the construction of their nests, and some use little else,
producing those clear, semi-transparent, white struc-
tures which the heathen Chinee converts into toothsome
soups. The Palm Swift lays three white eggs, which
may be looked for in the hot season. You must secure
the assistance of a toddy-drawer to obtain them.
The Common Indian Swift, (Cypselus affinis] as
Jerdon calls our sixth species of this family, might
rather be named the House Swift, for it comes nearer
taking the place which the House Swallow fills in Eng-
land than any other. It does not often build under the
eaves of a private house, but the arched entrance to
Messrs. Greaves, Cotton & Co.'s offices, the central hall
of the Post Office, the porch of the old High Court, in
short, any spacious porch, or verandah, or high-arched
door- way, will do. The Indian House Swift is a soci-
able bird and will not build alone, but founds regular
villages, which may consist of half a dozen nests or
half a hundred. They are large and solid, generally
THE SWALLOWS AND SWIFTS. 4 1
clustered together, and so stuck over with feathers on
the outside that they look like one great, fluffy mass ;
but each of them has its own private entrance at the
side. These are not only cradles for eggs and young,
but dwellings in which the birds live all the year
round. Regularly every evening the community
gathers together, and after spending some time in play-
ful evolutions in the air, as Jerdon says, " with much
fluttering of their wings and a good deal of twittering
talk," one after another swoops, with a "shivering
scream," and pops into its bed. When there are young
to be fed (which may be at any season, for they seem
to have several broods in the year), the parent birds
are coming and going all the day. Only two or three
eggs are laid at a time, which are white, like the
eggs of all Swifts. The Common Indian Swift is a
black, or blackish, bird, with the chin and the small
of the back pure white, so it need not be mistaken for
any other bird. Its tail is short and square.
I have seen other Swifts and Swallows in Bombay.
Of the Cliff Swallow ( Hirundo flimicola) I am
certain, and I think I have seen a Crag Martin about
Malabar Hill which was larger and paler than the
common one. Then there is that grand bird, the
Alpine Swift ( Cypselus melba), which I have shot
within a few miles of Bombay. But a bird that gets
up before daylight and goes to bed long after dark
and flies all day at a hundred miles an hour may be
seen anywhere.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS AND
KINGFISHERS.
Bee-eaters.
How shall I describe a Goatsucker? If you are
walking by day in scrubby ground on some still
THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS. 43
unreclaimed part, say, of Cumballa Hill, and a brown-
ish bird starts from under a bush at your foot and flies,
with jerky strokes of its very long wings, for a dis-
tance of twenty or thirty yards, and then drops under
a bush again, it is a Goatsucker. You have disturbed
it in its sleep. Or after sunset, in the dusk of the
evening, you may come upon it sitting in the dust,
right in the middle of the road, in some unfrequented
neighbourhood. It will jump up suddenly as often
as you approach it, and fly before you for a little dis-
tance, then drop into the middle of the road again and
squat, looking just like a large frog, or toad, dimly
seen. This is how it spends the night, or rather, I
should say, the times of dusk and dawn, for I believe
it sleeps at midnight. At intervals it springs up and
takes a circuit, performing somersaults and other
antics in the air. It is catching moths or beetles.
Sometimes it perches on a bough of a low tree, not
across it, as any other bird would, but along it. Such
is a Goatsucker in the bush. In the hand it is a weird
thing, with a flat head and very large, lustrous, dark
eyes, like those of the heroine in a penny dreadful.
Its feet are small and its bill is a mere apology, but
its head is almost split in two by the width of its gape.
Its soft plumage is very beautiful, but hardly de-
scribable. It consists of earthy and ashy and reddish
shades, mottled, barred, or curiously pencilled with
darker tints.
This bird is called a Goatsucker from its wicked
habit of milking domestic goats. In modern books
of Natural History you will find this habit denied and
the bird called a Nightjar, but they cannot get rid of
its Latin name, Caprimulgus, with which it has been
44 THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS.
branded from the days of Pliny. The Goatsuckers, or
Nightjars, belong, of course, to the Tribe Fissirostres.
There are half-a-dozen species of them in India, of
which one occurs in Bombay. I have only caught
occasional glimpses of it, but it can be no other than
Caprimulgus asiaticus, the Common Indian Nightjar.
Its voice is a strange sound and has been compared
to a small stone skimming along on ice. All the
members of this family lay their eggs, only two, on
the bare ground, in the hot season. They are of a
pale salmon, or stone colour, patched and blurred
with purplish brown.
The next family of the Fissirostres contains the Bee-
eaters. Everybody knows the little grass-green bird,
with a long bill and two long, thin feathers, outgrow-
ing the rest of its tail by a couple of inches, which sits
on a twig, or telegraph wire, and darts after passing
flies ; but I have met many who did not know what to
call it. It is the Common Indian Bee-eater ( ' Merops
viridis). In Bombay it is to be seen everywhere from
the end of the rains till the beginning of the hot
season, but disappears in the interval. Yet it is not
ranked as a migratory bird, and it is not so in the
usual sense. It only leaves us during the breeding
season, because it cannot find comfortable family
quarters in our island. It makes its nest in a burrow,
as long as a man's arm, which it digs for itself. Its
only pickaxe is its own slender beak, so it seeks some
river bank, or similar situation, where the soil is
soft. At such a place hundreds of them will congre-
gate and bring up their young in company. That busi-
ness over, they disperse again and pursue their useful
mission of keeping down the flies ; for though they
THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS. 45
are certainly fond of bees, they do not confine them-
selves to that diet. The little Bee-eater has always
been a favourite of mine. Wherever and whenever you
meet it, it looks bright, happy, sociable and good-
humoured. No one ever saw Bee-eaters quarrel-
ling. Indeed, they appear to be so pleased with each
other's society that they always sleep together, hun-
dreds sometimes in one tree. They are very particu-
lar about their personal appearance, taking a dust bath
frequently in the middle of the road, and trimming
their feathers with care. And they have a personal
appearance worth paying attention to. The general
colour is a vivid green, but the effect is heightened by
the most tasteful little touches of other hues. The
back of the head and neck are reddish golden, and
there is an expressive black stripe across the eye.
The chin and throat are of a fine verdigris green,
bordered by a demi-collar of black. The quill feathers
are reddish, and each one is tipped with black : the
effect of this is very fine when the wing is stretched
out in the sunlight.
Another species, which Jerdon calls The Blue-tailed
Bee-eater ( Merops phillipensis ), is pretty common at
some places on the coast, and I have seen it in Bom-
bay. It is a larger bird than the common kind and
darker in colour.
The last family of the gape-mouthed birds with
which we have to do comprises the Kingfishers, of
which we -have two species, perhaps I should say
three. The White-breasted Kingfisher (Halcyon
smyrnensis), most gorgeous of all Bombay birds, is,
I hope, familiar to everybody. No habit of observa-
tion is required for noticing it : it compels notice.
46 THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS,
Its beak is coral red and three inches long, its shirt
front spotless white, its vest and also its whole head
and neck rich chestnut brown, its shoulders glossy
black, and the rest of its wings, back and tail, brilliant
blue. When it flies, a broad white band opens on its
wings. The White-breasted Kingfisher is a bird of
gardens and hence fond of Bombay. Wherever there
is anything like a tank, or pond, or even a shallow
well with a tree overhanging the water, there you will
find it. It will even visit a garden tub and enjoy a
plunge bath. The two conditions'it asks for are shade
and water. Doubtless it enjoys these itself, but that
is a secondary reason for its seeking them. The pri-
mary reason is that little frogs enjoy them and it enjoys
little frogs, for, though a member of a fishing caste, it
is itself but a poor fisher. It is happily not fastidious.
Water insects, crabs, anything in short that it can
catch and swallow, is welcome. A friend of mine intro-
duced one into an immense aviary, in which he kept
a great variety of small birds, and forthwith the little
amadavats began to disappear rapidly and mys-
teriously. He caught the culprit at last in flagrante
delicto and ejected it. The White-breasted Kingfisher
lays five or six pure white eggs, during the hot sea-
son, in a hole in a bank, or in the side of a well.
This bird has not a musical voice: few brilliant birds
have. Its commonest cry is a rattling scream, which
it utters when flying ; but it has also a shrill, plaintive
call, which seems to relieve the monotony of sitting
alone, watching for fishes.
A far cleverer fisher is the little bird which Jerdon
calls the Common Indian Kingfisher (Alcedo ben-
galensis ), but which is now admitted to be identical
THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS. 47
with the only Kingfisher found in England. It used
to be regarded as a distinct species, chiefly because it
grows to a larger size in a cold climate ; but so does
man. It is a little bird, about the size of a sparrow,
which sits on twigs, or stones, beside all waters,
pointing its long, sharp, black beak this way and
that way, as it scans the pools, and jerking its pert
little tail. When it sees a chance, it takes it in-
stantly, popping obliquely into the water and snap-
ping up the fish with its little forceps in a trice.
When it emerges, the fish is across its beak, in
which position it cannot be swallowed ; so the
bird alights on a stone and knocks the slippery
morsel about in a business-like way until it gets
hold of it endways with the head pointing throat-
wards. Then the fish disappears suddenly. The Com-
mon Kingfisher lives almost exclusively on fishes from
one to two inches in length, and wherever these are
to be found you will find it. There are usually a
pair together, which have their own preserves and
drive off every intruder. They fly from pool to pool,
straight and swiftly, just above the surface of the
water, answering to each other in shrill chirps. They
lay five, six, or even seven, eggs, in a hole in a
bank, which they dig for themselves. From March
till June is the season. The Common Kingfisher is
a lovely bird, though less dazzling than the last
species. The head is dusky, speckled with blue, the
rest of the* upper parts are blue, or greenish blue,
brightest on the back, and the whole of the under-
parts are the colour of bright rust. There is a strik-
ing crescent-shaped patch of pure white on each side
of the neck,
48 THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS.
I said that perhaps a third species might be
included among the Common Birds of Bombay.
I meant the beautiful speckled bird (Jerdon's Pied
Kingfisher, Ceryle rudis), which is so common on
the Poona river and on all rivers and large
tanks and backwaters. I have seen a pair of them
fishing on some flooded ground near Dadar station.
This is the cleverest fisher of the whole tribe. It will
not work from a perch, but hovers like a Kestril,
ten or fifteen feet above the water, with its long bill
pointed downwards, and drops perpendicularly on
its prey. Jerdon says that he never saw one plunge
into the water and come out without a fish.
They always hunt in pairs, cheering each other with
shrill cries, and stopping now and then to rest on a
wall and get their breath. Like the rest, they lay
their eggs in holes from February to April.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE PARROTS.!
THE second tribe of the perching birds is the
Scansores
or Climb-
ers, which
comp rise
the Parrots,
Woodpeck-
e r s, and
Cue koos.
In all these
the outer
toe of each
foot is turn-
ed back, so
that two
toes point
fo r w a r d s
and two
backwards .
This a r -
ran gem e n t
gives the
foot a pecu-
liarly firm grasp, and leads to a difference in gait
which every one has noticed who ever kept a Parrot.
The Parrot does not sit upright and hop from perch
to perch, as a canary docs ; it clambers about the
Prisoner.
SO PARROTS.
cage hand over hand, or rather, foot over foot : hence
the name, Climbers. Except this peculiarity in the
form of the foot, Parrots have little in common with
Woodpeckers or Cuckoos, and in all modern systems
they are widely separated, being, as I have already
said, ranked in an order by themselves and placed
near the Owls. They have proportionally a larger
brain than almost any other birds, and the tongue,
which is thick and fleshy, is endowed with a very
discriminating sense of taste. They have also, as a
rule, a fine ear. The short, curved, bill is partly
covered with a cere cf bare skin, a feature in which
they resemble the birds of prey.
India possesses a good many representatives of the
family, but, with a single exception, they all belong to
one division of it, namely, the Parrakeets, which
are green birds of moderate size, with long tails.
Cockatoos, Macaws, true Parrots, Lories, are all
absent from India. And of the Parrakeets, only
one, the Rose-ringed, or Common, Parrakeet, makes
its home in Bombay. I was once told by a gentle-
man, whose memory must have gone back to the
early fifties, that even this was a recent settler.
He said that when he came to Bombay there were
no Parrots. Statements of this kind, except from
very careful observers, must be received with caution,
but it is not impossible that the wild Parrots,
which now swarm about Malabar Hill, are for the most
part descendants of escaped prisoners. For Bombay
has long been a veritable Botany Bay to this perse-
cuted race. Hundreds upon hundreds every
season are drafted from the mainland to the great
slave mart in the Crawford Market, crowded together
PARROTS. 51
in dark and noisome baskets, like slaves in a dhow.
Thence they find their way to every lane and
alley in the native town, where they spend the short
remainder of their days in little iron and tin prisons,
with a cold, cutting wire to perch on, and nothing to
do. Happily, a great many escape through the care-
lessness of their keepers, and, though the short,
ragged tail, dirty plumage, and uneasy manner, betray
them for a time, they soon adapt themselves again
to wild life.
This bird scarcely needs description. The female
is green all over, while the male has a rosy collar and
black necktie. The beak is coral red. The scientific
name of this species is Paloeornis torquatus* There
is a much larger bird, Paloeornis eupatria, called
by Jerdon the Alexandrine Parrakeet, because it is
the kind which Alexander the Great is supposed
to have taken back with him from India. It is
much the same in colour, except that the male has a
patch of red on each wing and all the tints are coarser.
It learns to speak better than the common one, and a
good many are kept in Bombay as pets. Of course
they escape too, but they have never effected a settle-
ment in the island. Then there is the lovely little
Rose-headed, or, as Blandford aptly names it, Blossom-
headed, Parrakeet (P. rosa). The whole head of the male
is rosy, that of the female plum-blue, and the beak
in both sexes is light yellow. These are also on
sale in the Crawford Market in hundreds, and I do
not know why one never sees them wild in Bombay.
But the little Blossom-head is nowhere a garden
bird. It swarms on the coast, ravaging the corn-
fields, in spite of little boys on mutchans slinging
52 PARROTS.
stones and hurling anathemas. All the Parrakeets
lay white eggs, usually four, in a hole, about the
beginning of the year. A hole in either a tree or a
wall will do, and I have seen a pair prospecting a
little architectural orifice in the dome of the
Mahaluxmee temple. I said that, with one exception,
the Parrots of India belonged to the group distin-
guished as Parrakeets. The exception is the Indian
Lorikeet (Loriculus vernalis), that quaint little
grass-green bird, with crimson back and blue throat,
about the size of a sparrow, which is offered for sale
in pairs under the name of Lovebird. It lives on
plantains and soft fruits, and sleeps hanging by its
feet from the top of its cage. This is one of the birds
of Bombay, though I daresay few know it. It flies
very swiftly, and when it alights among foliage as
green as itself, it is practically invisible ; so it escapes
observation ; but its sharp, triple chirp, always
uttered when flying, may be heard about the lower
road to Malabar Point.
CHAPTER IX,
THE CUCKOOS.
CUCKOO is properly the name of a particular migra-
t ory bi rd,
which spends
the spring
and summer
in Europe
and the win-
ter in warmer
latitudes
(India, for
example),
and is noto-
r i o u s for
shirking its
parental res-
ponsibilities
and foisting
its offspring
upon other
birds to
bring up.
But the name
is applied to Pied Crested Ciickoo.
a whole group of birds which resemble the European
Cuckoo in structure and have the same disreputable
habit. There are many species of the family in India,
54 THE CUCKOOS.
and all, like the home bird, are better known to the
ear than the eye. The most familiar of them all is
the Koel (Eudynamys orientalis, or honorata). It is
a great black fowl almost as large as a crow, with a
much longer tail and a green bill. That is the male.
The female is of a dark-greenish dusky hue, spotted
and banded with white. But the Koel is seldom
seen. It is —
No bird, but an invisible thing",
A voice, a mystery.
Early in the morning, through the hottest hours
of the day, late in the evening, sometimes in the
dead of night, its loud and mellow voice calls to us
in a rising crescendo, " Who-be-you? Who-be-you ?
Who-be-you ? " And we call it the Brain-fever Bird.
We are strange and whimsical creatures. An old
English poet complains—
For here hath ben the lend cuckovv-
I pray to God will fire her bren.
But the fashion has changed now, and the lend
cuckow has become a favourite of the poets. It is
the u darling of the spring," a "blessed bird," and
its note is a " mellow May song, clear and loud."
Meanwhile, its own cousin in India is the Brain-fever
Bird. Yet the Koel also is a darling of the spring.
It does not altogether leave us in winter, but at that
season it is silent. As the weather grows warm it
begins to utter its joyful note, and its spirits rise with
the temperature ; in May it cannot contain itself at any
hour of the twenty-four. One is prompted to ask,
What is all the excitement about ? That is easily an-
swered. In May the crows are busy building their
qests, and it is to them that the Koel intends to com-
THE CUCKOOS. 55
mit the care of its offspring. The crows seem to have
a shrewd suspicion that they are played upon in some
way by the Koel, and they never see the bird without
mobbing him, but he dives into some thick tree with
loud screams, and dodges them among the foliage,
while the silent and insidious hen Koel takes advan-
tage of their absence to drop an egg or two into their
nests. Crows cannot count above three at the most,
and the new egg is not unlike their own, so they
never discover the trick, and when the young bird
grows up and develops its long tail, they are quite
proud of it. Only yesterday I saw a pair of crows
fondly feeding a clamorous young Koel, together
with its foster brother, their own child. It was hun-
gry and clamorous too, but the Koel appeared to be
the favourite with the parents. The European Cuckoo
coolly ejects the rightful occupants of the nest and
takes their inheritance. The young Koel is not so
base.
There is another Cuckoo whose voice is more de-
pressing to me than that of the Koel, and it is
more persistent ; at least, it cries more in the night.
Its Latin name, Cacomantis passerinus (in Jerdon,
Polyphasia nigra\ is particularly happy. Jerdon calls
it the Plaintive Cuckoo, and likens its cry to the
syllables, Kaveer, Kaveer, Kaveer. It is also black,
or dark ashy, and long-tailed like the Koel, but it is
a little bird. Its eggs have been found in the nests
of wren-warblers, bulbuls, and other small birds. It
is seldom seen.
Neither of these two Cuckoos is nearly so common
in Bombay as on the mainland. But there is another
species which appears to prefer our island to any
56 "THE CUCKOOS.
other part of India. This is the Pied-Crested Cuckoo
(Coccystes jacobinus), a very handsome bird, much
like a magpie in colour, but smaller and slighter in
build. The under-parts and a bar across the wings
are pure white, all the rest of it is glossy black, and
an elegant, pointed crest gives style to its head. It
has a loud, clear, excited cry, but is not so addicted
to needless reiteration as the last two. The crows
appear to be under some misapprehension with re-
gard to this bird, and persecute it even more savagely
than the Koel. Almost every specimen I have had
in my hands has been rescued from an avenging mob
of crows when it had no strength to go further. There
is no ground, as far as I know, for their hatred, for
this species does not interfere with their domestic life,
but commits its offspring to the Seven Brothers.
The pied youngster grows up as one of the brother-
hood, and is treated brotherly, but its wild gypsy
nature is stronger than habit and it leaves them as
soon as it is able to take care of itself.
That great, awkward, black bird, with reddish
chestnut wings and a long tail, which is known by
various nicknames, such as Crow Pheasant, or Jungle
Cock, is classed among the Cuckoos, though it does
not lay its eggs in the nests of other birds, but makes
one for itself and brings up its own family respect-
ably. It is the Coucal, Centropits rufipennis. It is
hardly a common Bombay bird, but it is very common
in the surrounding country and has been seen, I
think, within municipal limits.
CHAPTER X.
THE WOODPECKER AND THE
COPPERSMITH.
I HAVE met with only one species of Woodpecker
in B o m-
bay, . but
it is fairly
common.
To give a
d e s c r i p-
tion of its
colours by
which one
who d i d
not know
it would
be likely to
recog n i s e
it, is not
easy ; but
anybody
who has
once seen
a Wood-
pecker
will know
i t again,
for there
is no other
The Coppersmith.
bird like it. It does not perch among the branches of
8
58 THE WOODPECKER AND THE COPPERSMITH.
a tree, like the other fowls of the air, but runs up the
trunk and boughs like a squirrel, clinging with its
strong claws and propping itself up with its short, stiff
tail. Its head, set crosswise on the thin, supple neck,
looks like the hammer of a gun, and it stops at
intervals to hammer fiercely at the trunk of the tree.
Its blows are delivered with extraordinary rapidity and
energy ; indeed, all its actions are impulsive and hasty.
The Woodpecker's trade is a curious one. While
other birds are hunting for all sorts of insects that fly
in the air, or crawl on the ground, or hide among the
leaves of trees, it lays siege to those which fancy they
have defied their enemies by burrowing into the solid
trunk. Its beak is a regular chisel, square at the
point, with an edge kept always sharp, on what grind-
stone I know not. Its tongue, which can be thrust out
for a distance of three or four inches, is armed at the
point with strong and sharp hooks, and also smeared,
I think, with birdlime, so that it forms at once a very
searching and a fast holding instrument. I remember
once watching a pair of Woodpeckers which had dis-
covered the burrow of some fat timber grub and were
determined to have it out. They first thrust their bills
in at the entrance, but evidently the occupant had
retired beyond the reach of their tongues. Then they
tried to tap the burrow some inches further down.
For a quarter of an hour they hammered away with
almost painful energy, but the wood proved to be
perfectly sound and very hard. Then they tried
another point and another, returning every now and
then to the orifice to thrust in their tongues and take
the exact direction of the hole. At last their patience
or their strength, wore out, and, with a cry of impa-
THE WOODPECKER AND THE COPPERSMITH. 59
tience, they darted off in quest of something more
promising.
Our one Woodpecker is a little bird, scarcely bigger
than a bulbul, but more stoutly built. It is the
Yellow-fronted Woodpecker of Jerdon (Picus mah-
rattensis), a striking and beautifully coloured bird.
The head is bright yellowish brown, or brownish
yellow, the crown of the male being adorned with a
scarlet crest. The throat is white and so are the sides
of the face and neck. This gives a peculiar piquancy
to the sharp countenance of the keen little bird. The
shoulders, wings, and tail are black, speckled with
white, but the lower part of the back is pure white. It
wears a 4< stomacher "of bright scarlet, but this you
will not see unless you have the bird in your hand.
Like most of its kind, it generally goes in pairs, one
following the other from tree to tree, with short,
sharp, impatient cries. They lay their eggs, from
February to March, in a deep hole in some dead
branch of a tree. Of course they make the hole them-
selves, working like navvies. The Red Woodpecker
(Micropternus gularis), having rather a weak bill,
saves itself this labour by burrowing into the nests of
tree ants, and brings up its family among them. No-
body has yet discovered how it " squares" the vicious
little ants. We in the same situation would be bitten
to death in half an hour. This species is common in
the country round about, and is very likely to be found
in Bombay, but I have not seen it. The great
Golden Back (Brachypternus aurantius) may occa-
sionally visit us too.
When a native Coppersmith has roughly shaped out
a kettle, or handy, the next thing he does is to put it
60 THE WOODPECKER AND THE COPPERSMITH.
on a small iron anvil and hammer it patiently for
hours, I cannot say certainly what purpose this
serves, but it is the proper thing to do, and every
Coppersmith's workshop resounds with the monoton-
ous clink of the small hammer. And on the very top
of a tree near by sits a little bird, possessed with the
conviction that the proper thing for it to do during all
the hottest hours of the day is to cry, in a sharp,
metallic voice, took, took, took, nodding its head the
while and turning from side to side. The likeness
between the voice of the bird and the hammer of the
man has struck Englishman and Hindu alike, and the
name of Coppersmith has taken hold of the bird in the
languages of both. But in science it is the Crimson-
breasted Barbet (Xantholcema indicd]. The Barbets
are placed by Jerdon next the Woodpeckers, which
they resemble in some respects and not at all in others.
While the Woodpeckers eat nothing but insects, the
Barbets live almost entirely on fruit. I once kept a
Coppersmith for some weeks, and tried it with insects
of various kinds, but it refused them all and lived on
plantains and dried dates. Yet I have seen one
catching flying white ants in the air. The Barbets
also perch, like common birds, instead of clambering
about trunks. But they lay their eggs in holes, which
they make for themselves, and then they are true
Woodpeckers for the time, clinging with their feet
and hammering fiercely with their stout bills. Their
holes are sometimes several feet deep, and Jerdon says
that they go on deepening them from year to year.
The Coppersmith is a bird about the size of a
sparrow, but more dumpy altogether, with a shorter
tail and heavier bill. Its colour is green above, a
II IK WOODPECKER AND THE COPPERSMITH. 6 1
dark but rich and shiny green, while the under-parts fl^ ^ <y
are whitish, coarsely streaked with green. Its fore- < /
head and a sort of collar under the throat are bright ,
crimson, but the throat itself and a patch on each !j
side of the face, round the eye, are pale yellow. The b^<
bird is gaudy rather than neat, and its figure and •"'•
gait are clumsy. It flies very straight and rather
swiftly, but may generally be recognised by its
figure. Its favourite food is the fig of the banian tree.
When a banian tree is in full fruit, crowded with
crows and mynas, you will not look in vain for the
Coppersmith, less conspicuous and obtrusive than
the others, but holding its own and repelling interfer-
ence with open beak and curious, snarling noises. It
lays its three white eggs about the beginning of the
hot season, in a hole in a tree, as I have already said.
Every one who has visited Matheran, or Khandalla,
during April or May, must know the " Kootroo, "
which "tires the echoes" of every valley with its
ringing repetition of its own name, Koor-r-r, kootroo,
kootroo, kootroo. It is also a species of Barbet, much
larger than the Coppersmith, and of a bright, grass-
green colour. It abounds on the ghauts everywhere,
and further down the coast it may be met with even
at the level of the sea, but only where there are well-
wooded valleys. It will not live in Bombay.
CHAPTER XL
THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE.
THE nextTribe of Perching Birds is
or T h i n _
bills, the
most ill-
assorted
group, I
think, o f
the whole
system.
Modern
classifica.
t i o n has
scattere d
it, of course.
The bond of
union
as
the name
implies, is a
long and
slender bill,
but some
birds have
to be in-
Sunbirds.
eluded, by reason of other marks of affinity, whose
bills are neither long nor slender, while the snipe
and curlew are excluded because they do not come
THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE. 63
into the order of Perching- Birds at all. However, we
are not concerned with the merits of this or that system
of classification. It is enough to remember that in
Jerdon's book and Barnes and all Mr. A. O. Hume's
publications, certain of the most striking and attractive
of our birds, namely, the Sunbirds, or Honey-suckers,
and the Hoopoe, will be found in this Tribe.
Sunbirds are not the same as Humming-birds. The
Humming-bird, u Half bird, half fly, the fairy king
of flowers," belongs to the peculiar glories of the
New World. But its place in the old is taken by the
Sunbird, and there are so many outward resemblances
between them that it was natural at first to regard
them as very nearly allied. Their anatomy, however,
shows that they are radically different, and we must
conclude that their outward likeness depends upon
the fact that they are called upqn to fill a similar place
in the economy of things. We are all moulded by the
conditions of our life. Men of the same trade in differ-
ent countries will show similar traits of character, or
even a similarity of feature, in spite of all national
divergences. The Koli women of this coast are dis-
tinguished from the women of all other castes by a
volubility of vituperative eloquence which betrays at
once that they are " fish-wives, " and the barber is the
town gossip here as in Europe. So the warm-blooded
whale, living always in water, has turned its limbs
into fins and assumed the mask of a cold-blooded fish,
while the Australian Platypus has its snout trans-
formed into a bill like a duck, for it lives the life of a
duck. Examples of this kind are so common in nature
that we need not be surprised to find Sunbirds exhibit-
ing a likeness to Humming-birds in those character-
64 THE StJNBlRDS AND THE HOOPOE.
istics which fit the latter for their peculiar butterfly
life ; but it is, indeed, curious that they should even
be clad, like them, with a radiance given to no other
birds. What is the connection between a diet of
nectar and a vesture of rainbow? A poetic fitness I
can see, but science is prosaic and wants a reason
why. I am afraid we shall not solve the riddle until
we know a great deal more than we yet do of the
meaning of colour.
Our commonest Sunbird (Arachnecthra zeylonica)
seen at a distance, and in a dull light, is a tiny bird of
a dark brown colour, except on the breast and lower
parts, which are yellow. But see it at close quarters,
with the sun shining on it, as its admiring mate sees
it ! The top of its head glitters with a hue which
Jerdon defines as " bright, metallic, glossy green,"
while Mr. Gates calls it " metallic lilac." Perhaps
one looked at it from the front and the other from
behind. Its throat and the whole of its back glow with
the tints of an amethyst, the shoulders and wings are
of the richest maroon red (Mr. Gates says " dull crim-
son "), and the tail is black. The admiring mate is
herself dressed in the beauty of simplicity. She also
is yellow on the under-parts, but paler than her lord,
\\hileher head, back, and wings are of a greenish
dusky colour. Yet the effect of the whole is very
tasteful and pleasing. They are a loving couple, and
I think the union is for life, for one seldom sees a
single Sunbird. Belt and other observers have stated
that Humming-birds frequent flowers less for the nec-
tar than for the little insects in them. I am sure this
is not true of the Sunbird. It eats plenty of little
insects, especially spiders, but it seeks flowers for
THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE. 65
their nectar. Sometimes it hovers in front of them,
like a hawkmoth, exploring their recesses with its long,
tubular tongue ; oftener it clings with its minute?
black feet, throwing its lithe body into all manner
of acrobatic attitudes, while it thrusts its slender,
curved bill into each tube in turn. And " between
whiles " it skips about, slapping its sides with its tiny
wings, spreading its tail like a fan, and ringing out
its cheery refrain, ching-ching, chikee, chikee, chikee,
as if it could not contain all the happiness that rilled
its little frame. Suddenly it darts off to another tree,
followed by its faithful mate, both traversing the air
in a succession of bounds and sportive spirals. I am
glad that Sunbirds are never caged, but cannot help
wondering why. I once caught one with a butterfly
net and kept it for two months, feeding it principally
on syrup.
The Sunbird's nest is one of the most wonderful
examples of bird architecture in the world. It is
suspended from the very end of some down-hanging
branch, often in an exposed situation by the wayside.
The foundation is a pear-shaped bag made of various
fibres, with an opening on one side, near the top.
Over the opening there is a little porch to keep
out sun and rain. Having finished this, the bird
turns ragman and scours the country for scraps of
rubbish. Fragments of bark, moss, lichens, withered
petals of flowers, tags of white silk from the nests of
red ants, the conglomerated pellets of chewed sawdust
with which woodboring caterpillars conceal the en-
trances to their burrows, anything in short that looks
old and shabby, is pounced upon and brought home
and carefully stuck about the outside of the nest,
66 THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE.
with shreds of cobweb, until the birds feel that they
have made their future home a thoroughly disreput-
able object, like nothing so much as the unsightly
collections of rubbish which one often sees gathered
about the ruins of the deserted web of some large
garden spider. And this, in fact, is just what you are
meant to take it for. Finally, the nest is well stuffed
inside with silk cotton, and the hen bird settles down
to her maternal duties, cozy and secure, with her chin
resting on the window sill, so that she can see the
passers-by. There are just two eggs, of a greenish
white colour, with brown spots gathered in a ring-
round the larger end. But as a rule, I think, only
one of the two is hatched. There are probably two
broods in the year, and nests may be found at any
season. They last long after the birds have done
with them and are common objects on the trees.
Another species of Sunbird, which Jerdon calls the
Purple Honeysucker (Arachnecthra asiatica), may
frequently be met with in Bombay, though it is not
nearly so common here as in the Deccan. The
foundation colour of this kind may be said to be
black, but it glitters all over with a sheen which
ranges from green to purple. The female is very like
that of the last. I have seen a third species in
Bombay, the rare and splendid Arachnecthra lotenia
(Loten's Sunbird), which Mr. Gates seems to say is
not found further north than Ratnagiri. It is very
like the last, but is larger and has a noticeably longer
and more curved bill. Two other very lovely
species are found on the hills, but they have no right
to a place in this paper. We have, however, one
pther bird which is classed by Jerdon with the Sun-
THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE. 67
birds and called a Flowerpecker (Dices um minimum),
but it has none of the splendid colours of the Sunbirds.
It is, indeed, a bird of the humblest aspect, of a uni-
form grayish-greenish colour, only paler on the under-
parts, with a very short beak and tail and nothing
striking or remarkable about it, except this, that it is
quite the smallest bird to be seen in Bombay. By
this it may be recognised, and by its fussiness, for it
appears to be charged with an importance quite out
of proportion to its size. It is always bustling about
and uttering its one note, chick, chick, chick, in a very
loud voice. It is said to feed upon minute insects and
flowerbuds, but I do not recollect that I ever saw it
eating anything except the soft, yellow berries of the
so-called "Mistletoe" (Loranthns], which burdens
and half kills all our old mango trees. Of course it
must sometimes eat other things, but I do not think
you will find the bird far from the plant.
By its nest the Flowerpecker is a Sunbird. I can
remember still the delight with which I first beheld
that truly exquisite piece of workmanship. In its
general plan it is the same as the nest of the Sunbird,
a purse, with the entrance at one side, hung at the end
of a branch ; but there is a difference in the idea that
the two birds work up to. The Sunbird, trusting to
a bare-faced fraud, almost courts observation, while
the simple-minded Flowerpecker seeks concealment.
It discards all superfluities, builds a compact little
structure of silk cotton and other fibres, hardly larger
than a duck's egg, and hides it among overhanging
leaves. I am sure also that it chooses a site, if possi-
ble, near to a colony of vicious red ants. It eludes
their notice in some of those mysterious ways known
68 THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE.
to birds, while their presence is a protection against
prying crows and squirrels. The nest is usually built
in March or April, and the eggs, of which there are two
(I once found three), are pure white, just like little
sugar comfits.
It is a wide step from the Flowerpecker to the
Hoopoe, a bird about the size of a Myna, or Starling,
which in the Fauna of British India appears in the
company of Hornbills and Kingfishers. If I could get
anybody to support me, I would advance the theory
that it is a species of land snipe. Its beak is more than
two inches in length and very slender, and just as the
snipe thrusts its sensitive forceps into soft mud for
aquatic worms, so the Hoopoe probes the dry land and
draws out " ant-lions " and other subterranean grubs.
The legs of the snipe are long, for it has to wade in
water, but those of the Hoopoe are very short indeed,
so that it is obliged to carry its body very level in order
to keep its tail off the ground. This, together with
its erect neck and prim gait, gives it the appearance
of being a very precise sort of person, which no
doubt it is. It is always exquisitely dressed, in a
suit of reddish fawn, with the skirts (called in bird
language, wings and tail) of some black material,
with broad white bars, which flash out with beautiful
effect when it starts to fly. On its crown it wears a
crest, which is usually folded down and projects
behind, giving its head and neck the appearance of
a toy pickaxe ; but at times, when it is startled, and
always in the act of alighting, the feathers start up
into a lovely corona of cinnamon red bordered with
black. The Hoopoe is found all over India and
may be seen occasionally on Cumballa Hill and
THE SUNBIRDS AND THE HOOPOE. 69
perhaps in other parts of Bombay. It breeds during
the hot season, in holes in trees or walls, but I do not
think its nest is likely to be found in Bombay. It lays
half-a-dozen white eggs, or more. In spite of the
dainty appearance of the bird, its nest gives off an
abominable stench, the cause of which does not
appear to have been well ascertained. The object
may be to keep unwelcome visitors at a distance.
CHAPTER XII,
THE SHRIKE AND THE KING CROW.
WE come
birds which
have not
gaping
mouths, nor
long and
slender bills,
nor any
other peculi-
arity, which
are, in short,
just ordinary
" d i c k y
birds." Cu-
vier divided
these into
two Tribes,
d i stingui sh-
ed by their
beaks
their
Those
stout,
bills,
and
food.
with
hard
which
now to a mixed multitude of little
The Butcher Bird,
eat seeds,
he called Conirostres ; and the insect eaters, with
weaker bills, Dentirostres^ »because they have gene-
THE SHRIKE: AND THE KING ckow. 71
rally a tooth, or notch, near the point of the upper
mandible. The division is a natural one on the
whole, or would be if we could get rid of certain
awkward birds which do not fit well into either sec-
tion ; the crows, for example, which eat everything
and have bills neither very stout nor thin. Jerdon
takes the Dentirostres first, and divides them into a
number of families, the Shrikes, Thrushes, Fly-
catchers, and so on. These appear to form a natural
flight of steps which has only been spoiled by recent
attempts to improve it.
The Shrike stands at the head, as it should. They
say that its palate is a^githognathous and its deep
plantar tendons are passerine, and, if this is true, the
fact must be respected ; but I cannot help feeling that
it is a pity, for, if the Shrike only had a desmogna-
thous palate and a different set of tendons, it would
be a miniature hawk, which is manifestly what
Nature meant it for. Its strong, hooked and toothed
bill, and its sharp talons are, in proportion to its size,
as powerful weapons as those of a Harrier or Buz-
zard, and it is a bolder and fiercer marauder than
either of those. Its manner of life is the same as
that of a Buzzard. It sits upright on the top of a
bush, or low tree, commanding a good expanse of
open, grassy land, and watches for anything which it
may be able to surprise and murder, a large grass-
hopper, a small lizard, or a creeping field mouse.
Sometimes it sees a possible chance in a flock of
little birds absorbed in searching for grass seeds.
Then it slips from its watch tower and, gliding softly
down, pops into the midst of them without warning,
and, forgetting all about the true nature of its deep
72 THE SHRIKE AND THE KING CROW.
plantar tendons, strikes its talons into the near-
est. No other bird that I know of makes its attack in
this way, except the birds of prey. The little bird
shrieks and struggles, but the cruel Shrike holds
fast and hammers at the victim's head with its
strong beak until it is dead, then flies away with it to
some thornbush which is its larder. There it hangs
it up on a thorn and leaves it to get tender. Hence
its popular name of Butcher Bird. This is no fable.
I have seen the bird do it.
The Red-backed Shrike (Lanius erythronotus)
is the only kind commonly to be met with in Bom-
bay. The large grey species (L. lahtora] and the
handsome little Bay-backed Shrike (L. hardwickii, or
mttatus], both so plentiful in the Deccan, do not like
our moist climate. Occasionally, indeed, I have seen
a young Bay-back, or a Brown Shrike, about the sea
face near the Church Gate Street Station ; but these
were stragglers. Even the one species we have will
not bring up its family in Bombay. It leaves us before
the weather gets hot, and stays away till the rains are
over. Its return in September is announced by much
harsh, sad screeching. By this it may be recognised,
and by its conspicuous white shirt front, long tail and
grim black eyebrows. The top of its head and its
shoulders and upper back are of a fine grey colour,
but the lower part of its back is reddish. Its tail £ind
wings are black. Though its usual cry is raucous and
somewhat dolorous, the Shrike has a flexible voice and
is not a bad mimic, I remember one particularly
talented individual which lived in a friend's garden
and used to entertain him with comic dialogues be-
tween bulbuls, lapwings and other birds. The Shrike
THE SHRIKE AND THE KING CROW. )$
makes a deep large cup-shaped nest in the thorniest
bush it can find, and lays four or five handsome,
spotted eggs. The usual season is from May to
August.
Next come the Drongo Shrikes. A Drongo appears
to be connected on the father's side with the true
Shrikes and on the mother's with the Flycatchers. Or
it may be the other way : at any rate it has kinship
with both families. The King Crow is a Drongo.
It may seem to be superfluous to describe a King
Crow, but I have met persons who supposed that
it was some targe and royal sort of Crow, so I will
describe it. A King Crow (Dicrutus macrocercus, or
ater) is a shining black bird, not the size of a starling,
with a long, deeply forked tail, which perches on a
telegraph wire, or a dry twig, and makes sallies into
the sky after dragon flies or bees. It has nothing to
do with Crows, save to vex their lives. The occasion
for that is generally its nest, which it builds on some
outstanding branch of a conspicuous tree, scorning
concealment. Round this it establishes a " sphere
of influence/' and the Crow, being a notorious
poacher and damaged character, is forbidden to enter
that. But the Crow is always sounding the depths of
our patience with the plummet of insolence, and it
will try the experiment of flying lazily past the King
Crow's nest, or even alighting on a neighbouring
tree. Then the little bird gives a fierce, shrill scream,
and shoots out like an arrow from a bow. Its aim is
true and its beak is sharp and its target is the back
of the lawbreaker. The Crow is big enough to carry
off its puny enemy and pick its bones, if it could catch
it, but who can fight against a " bolt from the blue?"
74 THE SHRIKE AND THE KING CROW.
The first onset may, perhaps, be dodged, but the nim-
ble bird wheels and rises and plunges again with
derisive screams, and again and again piling pain
and humiliation on the abject fugitive till it has
gone far beyond the forbidden limits. Then the
King sails slowly back to its tree and resumes its
undisputed reign. Over the length and breadth of
India this bird is found, and wherever it is found it
takes the first place by sheer force of character
and high spirit. Its cheery voice is one of the first
sounds that greet the dawning of the day. It has not
much of a song, though Jerdon says he has heard it
profanely called the Scotch Nightingale. It makes
a little cupshaped nest on any moderately high tree,
i^^ usually about April in this part of the country, and
L <rx t lays three whitish eggs with claret-coloured blotches.
In other parts of India there are several species of
Drongos besides the common one, but the only other
that I have ever seen in Bombay is Jerdon's White-
bellied Drongo (Dicrurus ccemdescens}. It is white
from the breast downwards and a little smaller than
the King Crow. It has a charming song.
This is the proper place to mention a few birds
which are allied to the Shrikes and may occasionally
be seen in Bombay. One is a medium-sized bird,
with a slate-coloured, or blue-grey, back, passing
into white on the under parts. The male has the
head, throat, and breast deep black. The under-
parts are narrowly banded with dusky in immature
birds. This is the Black-headed Cuckoo-shrike (Vol-
vocivom sykesii\ It attracts little attention except
in the hot season, when it constantly utters a loud,
not unmusical, exclamation. I have found its nest
THE SHRIKE AND THE KING CROW. 75
not far from Bombay, in June ; a little nest, fixed in
a fork of a thorny tree, scarcely more than big
enough to hold the three brown-spotted eggs.
Then there is the large Cuckoo Shrike (Graucalus
macei), a bird nearly as big as a pigeon, of a pale,
slaty-grey colour. The under parts are greyish
white, narrowly banded more or less distinctly with a
darker shade. It eats large insects of any soft kind
and also Banian figs and other fruit. As it passes,
with a peculiar undulating 'flight, from one tree-top
to another, it calls attention to itself by a loud, shrill
cry of a single note. I have seen and heard it
frequently on Malabar Hill.
Perhaps I should also mention the Woodshrike
(Tephrodornis pondiceriand), a plain, brownish-ashy
bird about the size of a bulbul, which is very com-
mon in thin, open jungle, but is not often seen, I
think, in Bombay. They are insect hunters and go
in pairs, or small flocks. As they fly from tree to
tree, one calls to another, in sweet, whistling notes,
" Be thee cheery?"
Last and least, but not to be passed by without
notice, is the Mini vet (Pericrocotus peregrinus)< a
dainty little bird, reminding one of a Longtailed Tit,
both by its appearance and habits. They go about
the trees in flocks of half-a-dozen, conversing in a low,
cheeping voice, and accomplishing a diligent search
for little caterpillars and other insects among the
foliage. Each flock is generally led by a male, black-
throated and scarlet-breasted. The bevy of plainly
attired birds that follow him may be either females or
youngsters. They are not all his wives, for he is
monogamous.
CHAPTER XIII.
FLYCATCHERS.
THE Flycatchers are a distinct and important branch
of that
st a n d i n g
army of
birds which
nature
keeps to
make war
upon the in-
sect hordes
that threat-
en to eat
her up.
Their duty
is well de
fined and
they keep
to it. They
hunt for no
caterpillars
among
leaves, nor
tap trees for
Paradise and Fantailed Flycatchers.
grubs, nor
rum mage
about the ground for beetles and worms. There are
Others whose office it is to do all these things. The
FLYCATCHERS. 77
Flycatchers concern themselves only with things that
fly, and they catch these on the wing. The King Crow
and the Bee-eater, as we have seen, do business in
that line too, but they take their stations on high
places and pursue their quarry into the sky. The
Flycatcher haunts sylvan shades and darts about
among the branches, snapping up its tiny prey.
Indian Flycatchers may be divided into two sorts,
the plain and the fancy. Of the fancy we have two
species in Bombay. The first is the Paradise Fly-
catcher (Tchitrea paradisi), which wears two streamers
of white satin ribbon in its tail and looks 'like a
meteor as it flits from tree to tree. Its body and
wings are white too, exquisitely white, but its head
and throat and distinguished crest are glossy black,
with green reflections. It is a bird that would catch
the eye of a blind man, and everybody who has
roamed about Matheran or Mahableshwar must be
familiar with it, but I daresay some will be surprised
to hear that it is a Bombay bird. The fact is that
the white plumage is the livery of the male only, and
even he does not attain it until he is well advanced in
years. Before that the upper parts of his body and
his wings and tail, including streamers, are of a rich
chestnut hue. At an earlier stage he wants the stream-
ers, and the female never has them. A young bird,
in fact, or a female, though handsome enough in its
chestnut suit and black hat, looks like a sort of Bulbul
and attracts little notice. And, as we know, ladies and
children generally form the majority of a community.
Besides this, I believe that the Paradise Flycatcher
only visits us for a short time during the cold season.
I have never heard of its nest being found on this
78 FLYCATCHERS.
coast. For these reasons it is little known as a
Bombay bird.
From a Mahomedan tradition we learn that the
Paradise Flycatcher belongs to that unhappy class
who are spoken of as having u seen better days."
At one time it was a truly glorious bird, clad from tip
to toe in dazzling white and adorned with a magni-
ficent tail of snowy plumes. But it gave way to pride
and got so puffed up at length that it presumed to
compare itself with the Birds of Paradise and claimed
a place among them. For this it was shorn of its tail
and utterly disgraced. It repented, however, and
Allah was merciful and allowed it to retain two of the
feathers of its tail, but he blackened its face that it
might never forget its shame.
Our second fancy Flycatcher is the Fantail, Jerdon's
Leucocerca pectoralis. This is quite another style.
It is a little bird of a squat figure and smoky brown
colour, with white eyebrows and a merry face, but no
particular points except the length and breadth of its
tail. But there is not a jollier spirit among creatures
clothed in feathers. With wings dropped after the
manner of a turkey-cock, and tail not obtrusively
stuck up but held gracefully and spread like a half-
open fan, it waltzes and pirouettes among the lower
branches of a shady mango tree,
So buxom, blithe, and debonnair,
that I always feel prompted to stop and ask it, " Pry-
thee, why so gay ? " Every few second it executes a
wonderful flourish in the air to capture a fly, or
lets off its tinkling little song. In March or
April it chooses a fork of some under-branch of a
shady tree, and toils merrily with its mate to fit in a
FLYCATCHERS. 79
dainty little cup of fine grass or fibres, compacted
and draped with cobwebs. The whole thing, when
finished, is not much bigger than an egg-cup, and
as the bird sits on her three ring-spotted eggs, her
head projects on one side and her tail stretches away
on the other. But the site is so well chosen, with
just a few leaves to come in the way of the prying
eye, that you may look long before you find that nest.
Of the plain Flycatchers (plain in form, I mean,
not in colour), there are many species in India,
and some of them are very brightly attired. Blue
is the most fashionable colour, and one common
kind has a red breast, like a robin. Jerdon calls it
Tickell's Blue Redbreast (Cyornis tickelli). I should
not be surprised to meet with this or some of the
others in Bombay, but the only species of which I
can say that it is found in our island is the Southern
Brown Flycatcher (Alseonax latirostris). It is just
" a tiny brownie bird," and no description of it would
be of much assistance in identifying it at a distance.
But just as you may recognise a man by his figure
and walk when you cannot see his features, so you
may know a bird without the help of its colour.
And the Brown Flycatcher has more character than
most. Its very way of sitting, bolt upright, on the
undertwigs of a tree, and the ceaseless, nervous move-
ment of its little tail, and the nimble little sallies
after flies, all declare it, and, at closer quarters, its
great black eyes, too big for its little head, are unmis-
takeable. It is a creature of habit, frequenting the
same corner of the garden day after day, and sitting
on the same twig. But it comes to us for the cold
season only, like M, P.'s and Commissions.
CHAPTER XIV,
THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS.
THE Thrushes come next after the Flycatchers.
The home Thrush is not found here, nor any bird very
like it, but its kindred are very numerous and n.itur-
The Seven Brothers.
alists call them all Thrushes. They are mostly much
bigger birds than Flycatchers, and are more liberal
in their diet, many of them being fond of fruit as
well as insects of all sorts and snails and worms and
" creeping things" generally. Many are musical.
Some feed chiefly on the ground, while others keep
to thej trees. In these matters every caste has its
THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS. 8 1
customs, and you will never understand birds unless
you note them. The first species of Thrush that
we have to notice is the Rock Thrush (Petrocossyphus
cyaneus in Jerdon), so called because its custom is
to live about rocks. Gardens and groves have no
attraction for it ; fields and meadows are positively
repulsive. But on the seashore you will find it,
sitting on the rocks, quite happy in its own way.
In the Deccan, but not in Bombay, it comes about
houses and may often be seen perched on the ridge
of the roof. Somebody has made the suggestion that
it may be the " sparrow " of Scripture, which sitteth
alone on the housetop. Sometimes, in sultry weather,
it comes in and sits among the rafters, fancying it
is in a rocky cave. It is a solitary and silent bird, as
we know it ; but in April, when the prospect of going
home begins to make its spirits gay, it will suddenly
break out into a charming song. I forgot to say that
the Rock Thrush is about the size of a starling and
of a uniform, dark, indigo-blue colour. It is not by
any means uncommon in Bombay.
Next come the Babbling Thrushes, which spend
much of their time on the ground and rummage
among fallen leaves. We are not accustomed to
speak of Autumn in India, but there is a time of year
in this country, as much as in any other, when each
tree puts off its old clothes and gets a new suit. The
only difference is that tropical trees for the most part
manage the matter more decently than those of cold
countries. They do not strip themselves before the
new suit is ready and stand naked till it arrives.
They undress and dress at the same time, as respect-
able people do. In this transaction avaricious Mother
82 THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS.
Earth plays the part of Moses. She receives the
" old clo " and opens a shop, and her customers are
numerous and beggarly. The earthworm sneaks up
from the ground and draws a rotten leaf down into its
burrow, the white ants swarm everywhere, bargain-
ing for remnants ; earwigs and vagabond cockroaches
wander about, examining everything and taking no-
thing. In such a crowd it goes without saying that
there will be no lack of sharpers, pickpockets, and
cut-throats, making victims of the ignorant and un-
wary. These are called centipedes, scorpions, pre-
dacious beetles, wolf-spiders and so forth. In short,
the carpet of dead leaves which is spread in every forest,
grove, and neglected garden, affords a habitation and
a livelihood to a vast and very varied multitude of
creatures, which have this special interest for us to-day,
that there are many kinds of birds whose sole business it
is to look sharply after them. Among these are many
species of long-legged ground Thrushes, and foremost
among them is the Babbler. The Babbler is seldom
spoken of in the singular. The natives call it Satbhai,
the Seven Brothers ; in other parts it is known as the
Seven Sisters. You cannot think of it except as a
member of a small party. It may be a family party,
father, mother, and grown-up children ; but I do not
think so. I believe it is simply a social party. Among
animals there is not the same diversity of individual
character as among men, nor the same variety : all
the individuals of one species are cast pretty much in
the same simple mould. But for this very reason each
species exhibits more distinctly some one or other of
the elements that go to make up the complex human
character. IJvery virtue and every vice in the moral
THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS. 83
catalogue may be found typified in some beast or bird.
So I hold. And if this be true, then the phase of
character which is expressed by the Babbler is
jolly-goodfellowism. Not being acquainted with the
method of distilling spirits, it does not pass the flowing
bowl, but a large portion of its life is devoted to at
fresco eating parties, in which the excitement of
finding the viands is combined with the pleasure of
consuming them, and the utmost conviviality prevails.
These parties are not too large for true sociality.
They consist of about half-a-dozen, whence the popular
name of the bird. There is no distinction of host and
guest : all are equal. They begin under some tree
where the leaves have fallen thick, and proceed as
humour leads. Each helps himself to what he can
find, turning over the dead leaves and pouncing on any
tempting morsel that tries to hurry away. If one is
lucky and lights on a particularly fat lot, his neigh-
bours come to his aid, and there is a good-humoured
squabble over the partition of it. There is a regular
flow of small talk, a good deal of mirth and laughter,
occasionally an eager dispute, but never a quarrel.
" Fighting? " says Phil Robinson, " Xot at all ; do not
be misled by the tone of voice. That heptachord cla-
mour is not the expression of any strong feelings. It
is only a way they have." They will light for each
other, but not with each other. Woe to the sparrow
hawk that thinks to make a prey of any one of that
party. Only a rash young fool would attempt such a
thing, and it will be taught wisdom. But. though the
Babblers dine together, they do not live together. Each
pair makes its nest apart, affecting great secrecy and
deluding the egg-collector with mingled impudence
84 tHE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS.
and wiles. The nest itself is an artless and shabby
affair, made of twigs and stuck into almost any situa-
tion in a small dense tree. There are usually three
eggs, of an intense colour between green and blue.
You may find them in the hot season. But I find I have
not described the bird. It seems an insult to such a
well-known public character to describe him. For the
benefit of strangers, however, I may say that the
Bombay Babbler (Malacocercus somervillei) is an
earthy-coloured bird, tinged with reddish about the tail.
It is nearly the size of an English Thrush, with less
body and more tail. It carries its tail a little raised,
as ground birds generally do. Its wings droop, its
feathers are loose and puffy, and altogether it reminds
you of old Jones, who passes the day in his pyjamas.
But it is a shrewd old bird and has a wicked white eye.
The Poona Babbler is bigger and wants the reddish
tinge about the tail, the Malabar Babbler has a hoary
head, and so on ; for there are many clans of them.
But they are all of one blood : you cannot mistake a
Babbler.
There is a little bird, about the size of a Robin,
which is said to be related to the Babblers and must
be described here, for you may often see it in Bombay,
though it would rather you did not. It seems to be
suspicious of man and tries to keep a bush between
you and it, eyeing you through the leaves. A bushy
I say, for the White-throated Wren-Babbler (Dumetia
albogularis), asjerdon calls it, is a bird of bushes and
hedges. It is not the custom of its caste to go into
trees. It is a plain bird, of a light brown colour, but
not difficult to recognise, if you catch a fair sight of
it, by the contrast of its pure white throat and its
THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS. 85
reddish buffy under-parts. It makes a curious nest,
a regular ball of coarse grass, with a hole in one side.
The first I ever found was in a Bombay garden and
was not made of grass, but of the curly paper shav-
ings in which eau-de-cologne bottles are packed.
How the bird came by this material is a question on
which the imagination may exercise itself pleasantly.
Besides these there are several Thrushes which,
though they do not like to reside in Bombay, belong to
this part of the country and are too pretty and too in-
teresting to be omitted altogether. Among them is the
White-winged Ground Thrush (Geocichla cyanotis)^
most common and least seen of all the beautiful birds
that haunt the cool shades of Matheran. As you walk
along any quiet path you may hear it whisking the
fallen leaves about with its beak, and if you bear
yourself gently, it will let you come very near. Its
back and Avings are slaty, or leaden, blue, but the rest
of its costume is of a fine, golden fawn colour. The
sides of its face are white, with two dark cheek
stripes, by which you may know it among a hundred.
Though generally so silent, it can sing sweetly and
would make a charming cage-bird.
There is another rainbow-tinted creature to which
good Jerdon has done injustice by his clumsy and
pointless name — the Yellow-breasted Ground Thrush
(Pitta bengalensis). Its native name, Nowrung, or
" Nine colours," is better. The crown of its head is
golden olive and black, its mantle green, lower back
pale blue, chin and throat white, breast yellowish
fawn, tip of tail bottle green, under tail coverts crim-
son, legs and feet pink. This bird seldom leaves the
ground, even making its nest at the root of a bush,
86 THE ROCK THRUSH AND THE BABBLERS.
Then there is the Idle School Boy {Myiophonus
horsfieldii)) better known to the ear than the eye, for
few birds have been endowed with so rich a voice,
and it would be world-famous as a songster if it could
only learn a tune. It is always practising, but makes
no progress. It is as large as a Blackbird and almost
blacker, but its forehead and shoulders are brilliant
cobalt blue, and its back and breast slightly spattered
with the same. It loves mountain streams and water-
falls and batters snails upon a smooth rock as the
dhobie does shirts.
CHAPTER XV,
THE BULBULS.
WE eome now to the short-legged Thrushes, which
have little
business on
the ground,
but live
amongtrees
and feed
much on
fruit. The
Orioles and
Bulbuls aie
included in
this group,
and the first
place be-
longs b y
right to
everybody's
familiar
friend, the
Common
B u 1 b u 1.
This is not
the Bulbul
of Lalla Rookh. Whether that musical creature has
any existence in Persia I cannot say, but the Bulbul of
India is not a musician. It is only a happy bird, to
which nature has given a cheery voice and a merry
Common and Red-whiskered Bulbuls.
88 THE BULBULS.
heart, and it twitters with the artless joy of a child,
but it cannot sit and compose a song. Yet it is
second only to the parrot as a favourite with those
castes of natives who keep pets at all. Easily reared,
easily fed, easily tamed, it has almost every quality
that goes to make an engaging pet. It is spirited
and pugnacious, too, and serves sporting Mussulmans
as a pocket edition of the fighting cock. They carry
it about perched on the finger, with a thin cord tied
about its middle, and challenge rival Bulbuls, betting
of course on the result ; else where would be the fun ?
In Hyderabad much money is won and lost over this
sport and a famous fighting Bulbul has been sold for
Rs. 500. Natives feed all soft-billed birds on flour of
parched gram made into a paste with ghee. If you
are a poor man, water will do instead of ghee^ except
for song birds, which require their throats oiled. As
a staple food I do not believe there is anything better
than this, but you will make your Bulbul happier if
you give it fruit of all kinds, pudding, rice, anything
in short that comes to your own table. In a state of
nature it feeds largely on berries and knows of many
kinds for which we have no names.
The Bulbul looks a plain creature at a distance, but
it is really a very handsome bird. Its face and the
whole of its fine crested head are glossy black. The
rest is of a rich smoky brown colour, but each feather,
especially on the upper part of the back, has a pale
edge, which makes a very effective pattern, like the
scales of a fish. The " under-tail' coverts," as they
are called in polite society, are crimson. This is the
only bit of colour about the bird's costume, and cor-
responds to a gentleman's necktie.
THE BULBULS. 89
For all I have said, the Bulbul is a silly bird.
Being of a social and domestic disposition, it always
has a wife, and would like to have a family, to which
end it collects thin roots and twigs and makes a neat,
if not artistic, cup-shaped nest. But as it sticks the
thing in any wayside bush and visits it fussily many
times a day, the crow knows exactly where it is and
takes the eggs, one by one, as they are laid, if they
have not been taken already by a snake or by the big
red-throated goblin lixard. The Bulbul is sorry, but
not discouraged. It makes another nest and lays
three eggs more, which are taken like the first. So it
plays the part in nature of a domestic hen, providing
fresh eggs for others to eat. But sometimes a nest,
luckily placed, escapes detection, and the Bulbul
becomes a happy father. The eggs are pinkish white,
richly spotted and blotched with claret colour. The
scientific name of this poor bird, I am ashamed to say,"
is Pycnonotits hcemorrhous .
First cousin to the Common Bulbul is the still more
sprightly Red-whiskered Bulbul (Otocampm jocosa
in Jerdon), whose crest rises to a sharp point and
curves forward a little over the beak. It is a very
perky little head-dress, and milliners might take a
hint from it, but the girl would need to have an
appropriate nose. It would not suit a Roman. The
Red-whiskered Bulbul is the bird that enlivens all our
hill stations with its vivacity, but it is not so common
in Bombay as the other. It is of a glossy hair-brown
hue on the upper parts and whitish on the under, but
the cheeks (or ears) of the male are crimson and those
of the female pure white. A dark brown gorget, or
necklace, which does not quite meet in front, makes
9O THE BULBULS.
the white of the throat more conspicuous. The head
and crest are black, and it has the red patch under the
tail which belongs to the livery of the family. Its
nests and eggs are very like those of the common
Bulbul and may be found at any time of the year.
In the preface to these papers I mentioned that I
once bought a pair of Persian (or Sind) Bulbuls in the
Crawford Market, one of which escaped, but appeared
in the garden next day with a companion. I have
since heard that this bird is often to be seen now on
Malabar Hill, and I have seen a pair myself across the
harbour, so I suppose it is in a fair way to become one
of the birds of Bombay. This bird is very like the Red-
whiskered Bulbul, but the cheeks are broadly white,
not red, and the patch under the tail is yellow. Next
there is a second cousin, which Jerdon calls the White-
browed Bush Bulbul (Ixos luteolus). This is a clumsier
bird than the other Bulbuls, uncrested and clad in an
una?sthetic garb of brownish-greenish olive, passing
into dusky greenish-yellowish white on the under parts.
There is no bright colour about it, not even under its
modest tail, but its eyebrows are conspicuously white.
It goes about the garden in pairs and every now and
then utters a loud, abrupt, rattling, but mellifluous
snatch of a song. This bird is not found generally
throughout India, but affects certain localities, and one
of these localities is the island of Bombay. Nowhere
have I found it more common. Its nest and eggs are
very like those of the Common Bulbul, but it is a
much deeper bird and will neither build where any
crow may find, nor betray its secret by coming and
going when an enemy is looking on. It usually
builds on a swinging branch near the ground.
CHAPTER XVI,
J
</,£
THE ORIOLES,
THERE are yet two birds to be described which
Jerdon calls
B u 1 b u I s,
though 1 can
see nothing
bulbuline
about them
and am in-
dined to
agree with
those who
would put
them with
the Orioles.
But Jerdon
had to invent
E n g 1 i s h
names for
more than
a thousand
birds, and it
is little
wonder if he
The lora's NcsL
was some-
times hard-pressed. The one which I will mention
first, because it is one of the very commonest birds
92 THE ORIOLES.
in our gardens, is the beautiful little lora (lor a
zeylonica, or tiphia as it is called now), a black
and yellow bird, about the size of a tomtit. The
top of its head, with all its back and upper parts,
is as black as a newly brushed boot, with a white
band across the wing. In sharp contrast with
this, the Avhole under parts, from chin to tail, are
bright gamboge yellow. This is a dandy costume
enough for any bird, but the lora has concealed
finery besides. At that season when "the young
man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," you
will see the male lora spring up into the air and
hover for a moment, and all at once the long, white
downy plumes that keep its ribs warm will start out
on each side. Then, like a white puff ball, dashed
with black and gold, it will slowly descend, quivering
and glittering in the rays of the morning sun. This
is not flirtation, nor fickle courtship. The bird is
making love indeed, but to its own true-hearted
spouse ; for I believe that these birds, like all the
Bulbuls, when once united, remain true to each other
till death do them separate. The spouse is almost
as lovely as her lord, but not so striking, for the top
of her head and back are green instead of black.
So are his for the most part during the cold season :
the glossy black back is part of his summer suit.
They go through life together, and if you watch him
as he hops from twig to twig, hunting every leaf for
caterpillars, you may notice that, every time he
utters his low whistle, there is a soft echo from
another tree. The lora has no song, but scarcely
any other bird has such a variety of sweet notes. Its
voice is heard in every garden, and if you catch sight
ORIOLES. 93
of it you cannot mistake it. A little bird, like a
tomtit, in black and yellow, followed by its mate in
green and yellow, can be nothing else than the lora.
The nest of this bird is a beautiful piece of work, a
little cup, the size of a small after-dinner coffee cup,
compactly woven of fine fibres and bound all round
the outside with white cobwebs. A pair built in my
garden last August, in a little fork, embowered in
leaves, at the end of a low branch of a tree not four
yards from my verandah. He discovered the place
first, and with much low cheeping and flapping of his
wings, invited her to come and see it. She seemed
to approve, but could not quite make up her mind
for some days, though he often brought her in
and went through the funniest little pantomime to
show her what a cosy and delightful site he thought
it. At last she agreed and they set to work furnish-
ing, but so slyly did they come and go that I
could not watch the progress of the work. After
a week, however, I could see from one particular
point the finished nest. Another week and her tail
was projecting over the edge of it, and I knew
that two or three little speckled eggs were under her.
Every morning he would slip in and take her place,
while she went to stretch her wings and get a
little food. I was looking forward to the pleasure
of watching the upbringing of the family, but just
about the time when the eggs should have hatched,
some evil beast, or blackguard crow, found and
devoured them. That nest is now in my museum.
Whatever the true affinities of the lora may be,
1 think there can be little question that the bird which
Jerdon calls the Green Bulbul (Phyttornis jerdoni) is
94 THE ORIOLES.
more an Oriole than anything else. It will always
be known- however, as the Green Bulbul. The
Green Bulbul is too little known among bird fanciers.
Not only is it beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, but it
is a bird of talent, and it is a wag. Disguised in the
hue of the foliage among which it lurks, it plays bo-
peep at the other birds and mocks them all in turn.
Now it is a King Crow, now a Sunbird, now a
Sparrow Hawk. You stare into the tree and see
neither King Crow, nor Sunbird, nor Sparrow
Hawk ; but the crimson eye of the little mocker
is fixed on you, as, with head turned to one side,
he watches your perplexity. Not till he flits across to
another tree and begins the same game there will you
find out who has been fooling you. For this reason
few even of those who take an interest in birds know
how very common the Green Bulbul really is. But
I cannot account for its being so little sought after as
a cage-bird. They are occasionally to be seen
for sale at the Crawford Market, and I once had
a young one which I took from a nest. It was
progressing well and would soon have been able
to feed itself, when a vile tree snake got through
the bars of the cage and killed it. I cannot think
of any bird that would make a more charming pet,
or a more ornamental. Its forehead is touched with
gold, its chin and throat are velvet black, its mous-
taches are hyacinth blue, and the tip of its shoulder
is touched with the same : all the rest of it as green
as a field of young rice with the de\v on it. The
Green Bulbul makes a loose, cup-shaped nest, usually
at the end of a branch of some large tree, and lays
two or three eggs, which are white with claret-
THE ORIOLES. 95
coloured spots. I think March or April is the usual
season, but I have only once myself found a nest.
Of the true Orioles, or Golden Orioles, there are
several species in India, two of which may be seen in
Bombay. They are all splendid birds, more gor-
geous than the Green Bulbul, and larger, being
nearly the size of a starling. The commonest is the
Indian Oriole (Oriolits kundoo), which is of a unir
form, bright beautiful yellow, excepting on the eye-
brows, the points of the wings (the quill feathers) and
part of the tail, which are black. The beak is pink
and the eyes are red. The female is tinged with
greenish, and the young are very green and
altogether a little "dowdy" compared with their
parents. The Indian Oriole's nest is a loose cup, or
bag, hung in a fork of a high tree. It is made of
fine grass and fibres and any other materials that the
bird finds serviceable. Jerdon found a nest tied
about with a long, strip of cloth, three-quarters of an
inch in width, which had been stolen from the dirzie
in the verandah. The theft was not actually proved,
but there was strong ground for suspicion. There
arc usually three eggs, white with dark claret-colour-
ed spots. But you arc r.ot likely to find an Oriole's
nest in Bombay. These birds leave us at the begin-
ning of the hot season and go to drier climes inland
to bring up their young. They return in September,
with their families, and are very noisy on first
arrival. The usual note of the Indian Oriole is a
rich mellow whistle, which Jerdon spells peeho.
The French name of the bird, loriot, seems to me
to give the sound better. It has also a harsher
cry.
96 THE OklOLES.
The Black^headed Oriole (O. melanocephalus or
ceylonettsist-~tht two are probably the same bird)
differs from the other in having the whole head
black. The yellow of the body is of a coarser
shade, or, if you prefer the word, a richer.
To my mind the whole bird is less tastefully got up,
but it is a glorious bird. This species is very
common on the whole coast during the cold
season, and no doubt in Bombay too. I cannot
speak with certainty, because it is easily confounded
with the other unless you get a fair sight of it. All
the Orioles are great fruit-eaters and frequent banian
and peepul trees with the mynas and coppersmiths.
But they also gobble up great, hairy caterpillars and
other large, soft-bodied insects.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ROBINS AND CHATS.
WE have now done with the Thrushes and come
to a group
of birds
bound toge-
ther by cer-
tain well-
marked fa-
mily fea-
t u r e s .
They are
small birds,
usually
dressed in
black and
white, or
brown and
white, al-
ways neat,
but never
gaudy.
They are
all afflicted
with some
form of
St. Vitus' The Magpie Robin.
dance in the muscles of the tail ; they are either twist-
ing it, or throwing it up over their backs, or doing
98 THE ROBINS AND CHATS,
something else than letting it hang down decently.
Lastly, they are all groundlings, collectors of crickets
and beetles and other small hard-backed insects that
run upon the face of the earth, but taking little inter-
est in caterpillars, or flies of any kind, and seldom
touching fruits. In all these respects they differ from
the Thrushes.
I feel that the one which ought to head the list
is the Indian Robin ; but you must not let your
thoughts run on the bird which is begging for crumbs
at our windows in the old country. Mr. Phil Robin-
son, speaking of the difficulty of getting up anything
like a Christmas feeling in this land of. regrets,
complains that the very Robin, instead of wearing
a red waistcoat, wears a red seat to its trousers. This
is true if not expressed with prudery ; but it is not
the only difference between the two birds. The
Indian Cock Robin (Thamnobia fulwata) is a jet-black
bird, with the exception of the rusty patch above-
mentioned and a narrow band of pure white across
the wing, which scarcely appears except when it flies.
Nevertheless it is by nature a Robin', making a friend
of man, sitting on his house top, coming into his
verandah, or even singing to him from his own
window sill. You will not find it in orchards or
shady gardens, for it has a prejudice against perching
on a tree ; but wherever there are old stone walls,
humble human habitations, ruins, rocky wastes, or
stony fields, there it is at home with its smoke-coloured
mate, running a few steps on the ground, perching
on some point of rock, tossing up its tail till it almost
touches the back of its head, and throwing out snat-
ches of cheery song. No more description is needed,
THK ROBINS AND CHATS. 99
Everybody knows the Indian Robin. In March or
April it makes its nest in a niche in a wall, or in some
recess in a pile of stones, never very far above the
ground ; and there it lays three dingy looking eggs,
of a greenish white colour, speckled with brown.
You will not find the nest very easily, for the Robin
is cunning, like all birds that build near the ground,
and will not come or go in sight of an enemy. And
in that connection man is an enemy.
A larger and more imposing bird is the Magpie
Robin (Copsychus saularis}, which is also black,
glossy blue-black, on the upper parts, but from the
breast downwards pure white. There is a broad
white band across the wing and two-thirds of the tail
is white. In short, it is coloured very like a magpie.
The female is like the male, except that the shade of
black is duller and runs to a smokey gray on the
throat and breast. Thfs bird is like the common
Indian Robin in all its ways, except that, though it
feeds on the ground, it perches on trees and is parti-
cularly fond of cool shady gardens. For this reason
it is a better known bird in Bombay than the common
Robin, though not nearly so familiar in the Deccan.
With the exception of one bird, which haunts the
deep forests of the ghauts, the Magpie Robin is the
finest songster that we have in Western India. In
March and April, when the Thrush and Blackbird
are singing to our friends as they lie in their beds,
the Magpie Robin at the same hour is pouring
forth a continuous torrent of far-reaching song
from the top of some palm or old mango tree.
And we scarcely say, "Thank you." Whether it
is that we leave our ears at home when we come out
100 THE ROBINS AND CHATS.
here, or that we leave our hearts at home and the ear
counts for little without the heart, I do not know ; but
it is a melancholy fact that there are many English-
men in this country on whom the music of its birds
appears to be wholly lost. I have been assured by a
man who had spent many years in India that the birds
here never sang, but only cawed, or shrieked, or jab-
bered. When I told him that skylarks, scarcely dis-
tinguishable from the " embodied joy " of English
fields, were singing every morning in the blue sky
above the very road by which he went to his work,
he scoffed at me. He had never heard a skylark in
India. There are of course more birds of song in this
country than in England, because there are more
birds altogether, and because the sun that cheers
them is brighter and the sky that inspires them more
blue. As to the quality of their songs, comparisons
are odious and unprofitable, because we cannot invest
Indian birds with the associations which endear those
of England. The voice of the Blackbird, heard in
bed in the cold silence of a spring morning, will sink
into one's heart in a way which is impossible in this
country, where we are not much given to lying in bed
of a morning, and where the cawing of crows, the
crowing of cocks, the yelping of pariah dogs, and a
medley of other unmusical noises come in at the open
windows with the first streak of dawn. Nevertheless,
if you do chance to be awake while the crows are still
asleep, the song of the Magpie Robin is rich and
sweet, and wonderfully powerful for so small a bird.
It will go on till eight or nine o'clock, but does not
sing, like the Nightingale, during the early hours of
the night, As the Magpie Robin perches on trees, so
THE ROBINS AND CHATS. IOI
it also builds its nests high, in any commodious hole
or recess in a wall or tree. A favourite place is under
one of the large ridge tiles at the corner of your roof.
There are generally, I believe, four eggs, which are
of a pale greenish colour, spotted or blotched with
brown. Look for them in April or May.
The Stonechats and Whinchats are for the most
part lovers of sandy wildernesses, and though several
species are common on the arid plains of Guzerat and
the Deccan, they avoid the coast. There are two,
however, which may be mentioned here. One is
what Jerdon calls the White-winged Black Robin
(Pratincola capratti}, a dapper little black-and-white
bird, which balances itself on the point of a reed, or
the topmost twig of a bush, and jerks its tail about
and utters little warbling Robin-like notes. All who
cross the harbour in search of snipe must know it
very well, and on the outskirts of Bombay you may
fall in with it. It builds its nest in similar places to
the Common Robin. The other is a sandy-coloured
bird, with black-and-white tail, which. Jerdon called
the Wheat-ear (Saxicola oenanthe). It is not the true
Wheat-ear, however, but a spurious imitation, and
is stigmatised in "The Fauna of British India" as
the " Isabelline Chat." On cold weather mornings
you will sometimes find it perched on railings about
the Esplanade.
The Redstart is another bird every one ought to
know, which fits in here. It is common in Poona
and all over the Deccan, and very familiar, coming
about our houses and sometimes hopping in at the
door. On the coast it is not so common, but you
may meet with it anywhere, and it is a distinguished
IO2 fHE ROBINS AND CHATS.
looking bird about which one naturally wants to
know. It is in fact a globe-trotter, coming to India
for the cold season from its home in Cashmere or
Turkestan ; and it has the ague in its tail. By the
peculiar shivering of that organ you may recognise
it. It is a little larger than an English Robin, and of
a dark-brown, or almost black, colour, which passes
into a rusty-red on the lower back and the whole
hinder part of the body and the tail.
There is another little fairy creature which few
notice, except those who are curious about birds,
but I must mention it, because it was in Bombay that
I first made its acquaintance. I mean the Blue-throat
(Cyanecula suecica). Near the house in which I lived
there was a field of Lucerne grass, irrigated from a
well with a Persian wheel, and here I used to notice
the happy little bird enjoying the pleasures of solitude
in the rivulets that ran in the cool shade of soft green
leaves. It is quite a Robin in its figure and gait, but
quiet and retiring in its disposition, and simple but
neat in its suit of olive-brown. But its throat and
breast are bright azure blue, and by this you may
know it. This is full dress, however. Immature
birds and females show scarcely a trace of it and are
not so easily recognised. This bird comes to us for
the cold season only, and is not uncommon across
the harbour wherever there are cool shades and
running waters.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE WARBLERS.
IN the days of Imperial Rome there were, 1 suppose,
almostevery-
where large
communities
of humble
brickmakers,
who made
cheap bricks
for poor folks'
houses, and
other sorts of
obscure, but
necessary,
people ; but
Tacitus does
not mention
them, so far
as I recollect.
There are
birds which
fill a similar
place in the
feathered Tailor Bird and Wren-warbler.
common-
wealth. The Wren Warblers and Tree Warblers
do an inestimable amount of useful work and appear
to enjoy as large a measure of contentment and
1O4 THE WARBLERS.
happiness as their betters ; but there is nothing about
them to catch the imagination of the historian and
they will never be famous. I have been perplexed as
to how I should deal with them in these papers. To
attempt to describe each species is out of the
question, for there are many, and they are mostly
so like each other that even the title " ornitho-
logist " does not qualify one to distinguish them at a
distance. If you can distinguish them with certainty
when you have them in your hand, you will fully
deserve the title. Jerdon was all in confusion about
them. With the aid of the large collections now in
the British Museum they are supposed to have been
successfully unravelled, and those who please may
study them in Mr. Oates's book. The best I can do
here is to try to help the ordinary lover of birds to
know a Wren Warbler and a Tree Warbler when he
sees them, and to particularise a few species which
have enough of distinctive character to separate them
from the crowd.
To begin with the Wren Warblers, — they are small,
dingy birds with long tails, which go about among
bushes and rushes and reeds, exterminating little
insects. They enjoy this life so much that they
moved the envy of Charles Kingsley, and you may
almost recognise them from his description —
I would I were a tiny, browny bird from out the south,
Sitting among" the alder holts and twittering by the stream.
I would put my tiny tail down and put up my tiny mouth,
And sing my tiny life away in one melodious dream.
But you must .not suppose that the said " melodious
dream " is a high class composition from a musician's
point of view. These little birds are not without a
humble conceit of their vocal powers, all the same,
THE WALLERS. 105
and the following inimitable passage from Richard
Jefferies will refresh every one who has witnessed
their performances : — " He got up into the willow
from the hedge parsley somehow, without being seen
to climb or fly. Suddenly he crosses to the tops of
the hawthorn and immediately flings himself up into
the air a yard or two, his wings and ruffled crest
making a ragged outline ; jerk, jerk, jerk, as if it
were with the utmost difficulty he could keep even at
that height. He scolds and twitters and chirps, and
all at once sinks like a stone into the hedge, and out
of sight like a stone into a pond."
All I have said above requires abatement if applied
to the Tailor Bird (Orthotomus sutorius), which is
nevertheless a Wren Warbler by nature and feature.
But it is a bird of some character and holds its tail up.
It is such a prominent feature of the bird life of our
gardens, that, if I cannot make it recognisable, these
pages may as well cease. But before describing it let
me remove a popular error by stating that the Tailor
Bird is not called by that name because it makes a
curious nest, nor because it comes out of an egg, nor
for any other senseless reason. More than twenty
years ago I was shown the cup-shaped nest of a Fly-
catcher, as a great curiosity, and was informed that
this was the nest of the famous Indian Tailor Bird. It
did not occur to my informant to ask why the maker of
that nest should be called a tailor rather than a potter
or a watchmaker ; and I have discovered since that his
kind is common. Therefore I take this opportunity
to explain that a Tailor Bird is called a Tailor Bird
because it sews. When its nesting time approaches,
which is during the monsoon, it searches fora shrub
14
Io6 TkE WARBLERS.
or bush, with large, soft leaves, and drawing two of
them together, proceeds to stitch them to one another
round their edges. At that season the silk-cotton tree
is bursting its pods and scattering its white clusters,
so the tiny tailor has seldom any difficulty in finding
cotton, which it spins into thread with its deft little
feet and beak. But if it can get ready-made thread,
so much the better. Jerdon tells of one which
regularly watched the dirzie in the verandah, and
as soon as he had left his seat for the day, pounc-
ed down upon his carpet and carried off his ends
of thread in triumph. The bird's needle is its sharp
beak. Piercing a hole in the leaf, it passes the
thread through and knots it at the other side, and
so on till it has joined the two leaves by their edges
all round and made a neat pocket, or purse, with its
mouth at the top, or a little to one side. Then a soft
padding of cotton inside makes it ready to receive its
treasure of three or four pretty little eggs. They
vary a good deal in colour, but are generally white,
thinly spotted with light-red. I have often seen a
nest made of a single large leaf, and, on the other
hand, where broad-leaved plants are scarce, the bird
will use more than two ; but the fewer leaves the less
tailoring, as the bird knows.
Last monsoon I was standing in the verandah of a
friend's house in Bombay when I saw an eager Tailor
Bird tugging desperately at a coir mat. 1 felt sure
that it must be in straits for something to make its
nest of, and knowing that my friend had a kind heart
for the deserving poor, I brought the case to his
notice the same evening. He promptly stuck a
bunch of clean cotton wool in the trellis, and almost
THE WARBLERS.
before I was out of bed next morning the bird had
noticed it and was carrying off large beak-fulls. He
practised a certain amount of guile, but was easily
tracked to a low, dense bush in the garden, where,
with such charitable assistance, he did not take long
to make his wife a very cosy house. It may encour-
age others in doing good to know that in due course
a fine family was reared and sent out into the world
in spite of the crows.
The Tailor Bird is green, or greenish-brown, on
the upper parts, with a golden tinge on the fore-
head. The under parts are white. When the neck
is stretched, a narrow dark mark appears on each side
of it, as if the bird had been trying to cut its throat.
In figure and gait it is very like the Jenny Wren at
home, but, instead of the apologetic stump which
that bird holds up behind, it has a long and elegant
tail, with the two centre feathers prolonged beyond the
rest. It is no musician, but has a remarkably loud
and clear voice, and is constantly saying tow/lit,
tow/tit, towhit, or else tow/tee, tow/tee, tow/tee.
There is another kind of Tailor Bird, which Jerdon
calls the Dark Ashy Wren Warbler (Prinia socMis).
It is remarkable for laying red eggs. They are
meant to be thickly spotted with red on a white
ground, but often the spots are so thick that there is
no ground colour left. This bird is larger and has a
longer tail than the other, and is of a dark, ashy-
brown on the upper parts. The under parts are
buffy, or reddish-white, and the two colours, dark
and light, are sharply separated on the sides of the
neck. This is the feature by which I recognise the
bird most casilv. It is not nearlv so common in
IO8 THE WARBLERS.
Bombay as the true Tailor Bird. As a tailor, ladies
say it is not such a neat worker.
Another species which is everywhere in Bombay is
the one which Jerdon calls the Common Wren
Warbler (Drymoipus inornatus). Its scientific name
is a happy one. " Inornate " describes the bird in a
word. It is a typical member of the group, a tiny,
dingy, homely, long-tailed bird, with nothing striking
about it. Jefferies' account of the song fits it exactly.
It is not a tailor, but it constructs a very ingenious
and beautiful nest, woven of fine grass and worked
into three or four high reeds, or stems of upright
shrubs. The nest is always well concealed by foliage,
but after the monsoon, when the leaves have fallen, it
comes into view. Old nests of this kind are often to
be seen in Bombay. There are few prettier eggs
than those of tHis unornamented bird. They are of a
pale blue-green colour, thickly marked at the larger
end with spots and blotches and fine lines of chocolate-
brown. There are four or five of them.
The Tree Warblers differ from the Wren Warblers
in this, that they pass their lives in trees and not
among grass and low bushes. There are other differ-
ences too. The Wren Warbler is flimsy and feeble,
loose-jointed and fluffy-feathered, encumbered with a
long pendulous tail and fitted with little wings that
just serve to carry it in a jerky way from bush to bush.
The Tree Warbler is a shapely bird, slim but firm,
wiry, athletic, with a well-proportioned tail and wings
that will, when the season arrives, take it from
continent to continent. For all our Tree Warblers
are foreigners. One of the commonest makes its
nest in Sind, but others go to the Himalayas or
THE WARBLERS. 1 09
Cashmere, Central Asia or Europe. In the cold
season they turn southwards again and diffuse
themselves over every corner of India. Many
reasons have been assigned for this strange " mi-
gratory instinct," as it is called, which affects so
many species of birds. No philosopher, as far as
I know, has bestowed as much thought upon this
same instinct as it manifests itself in Viceroys and
Governors, members of Council, wives and other spe-
cies of the genus Homo. To me the matter appears to
lie in a nutshell. When a place becomes too hot, ortoo
cold, or too wet, the inhabitants feel a very natural in-
clination to leave it and go to some place which is more
comfortable. And they do so. Not all; some humble
creatures, muskrats, for example, and frogs and
toads and husbands and some others, cannot get
away. Others are kept back by a love of home,
or a disinclination for change. But those that can
go generally do go, and so it grows into a fashion.
Among birds a fashion soon acquires a hereditary
force and we call it an instinct. In the case of the
Tree Warblers there is a simple and all-sufficient
reason for this annual journey southwards, which is,
that if they remained they would starve. Birds that
live entirely on small, soft-bodied insects, cannot
afford to spend the winter in a climate in which the
lower forms of life almost cease during that season.
But in the tropics there is no time of the year when
spiders and little insects of many kinds may not be
had. So to the tropics they go, as Jacob and his
family went to Egypt. And in every green tree, at
almost any hour of the day, you may see them hop-
ping from twig to twig, flitting, clinging, looking
I TO THE WARBLERS,
under spray and leaf, ceaselessly and silently. For
they hardly make a sound, except a low tik at intervals.
They hold no intercourse with each other : even family
ties seem to be sundered for the season. I have
said that there are many species, but the differences
between them seldom amount to more than this, that
one is greenish-brown and another is brownish-green,
and another is a little yellowish on the under-parts,
or has a pale eyebrow, or a faint band on the wing,
or is half-an-inch longer or half-an-inch shorter.
Some few are marked more distinctly, but they be-
long to a side-branch of the family. Among these is
the English Whitethroat, which spends the winter
with us, and the Blackcap, a much larger bird with a
black cap. I believe that both these may occasionally
be seen in Bombay.
Among the long reeds that grow near water about
the Flats there is a plain brown bird, larger than a
sparrow, which has an invincible objection to being
seen. And it would succeed without difficulty if it
could keep quiet ; but it feels impelled to say chuck
every few seconds, in a loud, emphatic tone of voice.
Then, when you look for it, it gets a dense bush,
or clump of reeds, between itself and you, and as
you move round the one side it moves round the
other and says chuck. It is a most exasperating bird.
I have spent hours trying to get a sight of it, with
little enough success, but I believe it is the Large Reed
Warbler (Acrocephalus stentorius), which also belongs
to a different branch of the great family of Warblers.
There is a lesser edition of the same, Acrocephalus
dumetorum, which may be met with in Bombay also
during the cold season,
CHAPTER XIX,
THE WATER-WAGTAILS, PIPITS
AND TITS,
WHEN I was a boy the Wagtails had a peculiar
fascination
for me, and
the feeling
has not quite
faded away
yet. There
is something
so original
and droll
about their
idea of life 1
To hold a
long tail
horizontally
behind you
and wag it
v igorously
and inces-
santly, to
spend your
days near
cool waters,
Wagtail and Tree Pipit
running about on the ground — not hopping like a spar-
row, but running with alternate steps — and catching
little somethings in the air, this is the Wagtail's
112 THE WATER-WAGTAILS, PIPITS AND TITS.
notion of the way to be happy. And it is happy : the
vivacity and nimble eagerness of all its motions leave
no doubt about that. No other bird behaves in this
fashion. I feel sure that there must be some depart-
ment of insect life which other birds have missed,
or despised, atrl which the Wagtails have appropriat-
ed. There are green caterpillars on the tender shoots
and little birds to seek for them, there are grasshop-
pers in the grass and mynas to chevy them, there are
beetles and earwigs under the fallen leaves and bab-
blers to dislodge them, there are midges in the air and
swallows to hawk them, there are grubs in the rotten
bough and woodpeckers to dig them out ; but besides
all these it appears that there are minute winged things
on moist ground in great abundance, which rise like
snipe when startled, and these are the game of the
Water-wagtail. It runs and turns and twists and
leaps into the air, and you cannot see what it is after,
but you distinctly hear the snap of its little bill, like
the pop of a distant snipe-shooter's gun. It follows
the cattle in the pastures and runs in and out among
their feet ; they are its beaters, which drive the game
for it. Or it hunts by itself in cool places, on the
shady side of the house and wherever large trees keep
out the sun.
I am thinking of the Grey Wagtail, which often
wanders far from water, but not from coolness and
shade. It is by far the commonest species we
have and a very familiar bird throughout the cold
weather. In the costume which it wears at that
season the upper parts are bluish-grey, but its fore-
head and whole face are white. On its breast there
is a black patch, exactly like a child's bib, and below
THE WATER-WAGTAILS, PIPITS AND TITS. 113
that again it is white. In summer it dons a different
costume, in which the throat and breast and the back
of the head and neck are all black, but we seldom,
if ever, see this, because at that time it is in Siberia
or thereabouts. There is a difficulty about the name
of this bird. There are in fact two species of Grey
Wagtails, quite distinct from each other, but very
difficult to distinguish, so much alike are they in
their winter plumage. In the early seventies Mr.
A. O. Hume was very much exercised about these
two birds, and at that time he was very innocent of
any leaning towards Buddhist principles in the
matter of taking animal life. He engaged all his
friends and helpers in a jehad against the whole race
of Grey Wagtails, that he might determine to which
species they belonged. I never heard the number of
the slain, but some survived, and I believe that by
far the greater number of those which visit us are of
the species known in Europe as the White Wagtail
(Motacilla alba). In Jerdon's book this and the other
are lumped together under the name Motacilla duk-
khiinensis, the Black-faced Wagtail, a most unfortu-
nate name for a bird whose most striking feature,
when it comes to us, is its clean white face.
Then there are the Yellow and Green Wagtails,
birds with olive or slaty backs and yellow breasts,
perplexingly like each other in their winter plumage.
The two commonest kinds are described by Jerdon
under the names — the Grey-and-Yellow Wagtail
(Calobates sulphured] and the Indian Field Wagtail
(Budytes viridis). All these come to us in September
and remain till nearly May, disporting themselves in
all open places. They are always to be found among
15
ti4 TriE WATER-WAGTAIL^, PIPITS ANt> TITS.
the tents on the Esplanade, enchanting the children,
a&d those whose hearts are still child-like, with their
pretty familiarity.
There is only one other species which 1 need
mention. It is a permanent resident and is very
common all over the Deccan, but not so often seen in
Bombay, because it is more a water bird than the
others and will not wander far from its river or tank.
It will have nothing to do with salt water. The
species I mean is, of course, the Pied Wagtail,
(Motacilla maderaspatana). It is a larger bird than
the others and is coloured very like the Magpie
Robin, shining black on the upper parts, with a
broad white patch on the wing, and pure white from
the breast downwards. Its tail is half black and half
white. It has also a broad white eyebrow, which the
Magpie Robin has not. It is a very sweet singer
and is sometimes caged. While all our other
Wagtails are migratory, the Pied Wagtail not only
remains with us the whole year, but sticks to one
spot. One reason for this appears to be that it is
always engaged in bringing up a family. Barnes
mentions one pair which made five nests, or at least
laid eggs five times, in less than half a year, and I
once found a large series of old nests of all ages on
the beams of a bridge. Any ledge, or shelf, or niche
near to water will do. An old boat affords endless
eligible sites, and I do not believe you will find a
discarded hulk on a river anywhere in the Deccan
without a pair ot Pied Wagtails in possession, singing
and swinging their long tails and driving off all rivals.
There are usually three or four eggs, of a greenish-
white colour, spotted and splashed with brown.
tHE VVATEk-WAGTAlLS, PIPlTS AND flTS. li^
The Pipits are birds midway between the Wagtails
and the Larks. Their tails are long, but not very
long, and they wag them a little. In plumage they
resemble Larks. There are many kinds in India,
most of which love stony hills and barren plains.
One species, however, which Jerdon calls the Indian
Titlark (Corydalla rufula), meets us almost every-
where, often consorting with the Wagtails. It is a
permanent resident, making its nest on the ground
like a lark. I ought also perhaps to mention the
Indian Tree Pipit (Pipastes agilis), so called because,
though it lives and feeds on the ground, it always
flies up into a tree when frightened. In its tastes it
resembles the Wagtail, seeking moist and cool places,
and the shade of trees, but in its character it is quite
the reverse of that restless creature. It is a quiet
bird, seldom uttering a sound, walking softly and
picking up little insects gently, while its tail wags
slowly like a mechanical toy. It is of a sociable
disposition, and you will often see half-a-dozen
feeding under the shade of one tree. In the country
which lies opposite our harbour, where the roads are
often avenues of fine trees, you may meet scores of
these birds in a morning's walk. They let you come
very near and then all fly silently into the tree above
them. They will not hop about there, but sit silently
for a little and then fly down again. You will recog-
nise them more easily by these traits than by colour
or shape, for there is nothing striking about the Tree
Pipit. It leaves us as the hot season comes on and
goes to bring up its young on the Himalayas.
The Larks outfit to follow next, for they arc in
many respects very near to the Pipits, but in the
l 1 6 THE WATER-WAGTAILS, PIPITS AND TITS.
arrangement which Jerdon adopted they were widely
separated on account of their stouter bills and more
vegetarian habits. Of the soft-billed, insect-eating,
birds, there is only one family left, that of the Tits,
and in that family there is only one bird which Bom-
bay can claim. That is the White-eyed Tit (Zoste-
rops palpebrosus), a bright little creature scarcely
larger than an Amadavat, of a clear green colour
passing into canary-yellow on the breast. " It gets
its name from a narrow ring of white round each eye,
which gives a peculiar expression to its face. In the
cold season flocks of these birds wander about the
trees, uttering a soft cheeping note, and, though I
cannot say I have actually seen them in Bombay,
they are so often seen just across the harbour that they
cannot possibly pass us by. In the rains the flocks
break up into pairs and make their neat little nests
and lay their pretty blue eggs, but not on the coast.
I suppose the rainfall is too heavy here.
The Indian Gray Tit, that dapper little bird, with
black head and white cheeks, which makes itself so
familiar in our gardens in Poona, does not appear
to come below the Ghauts. The pretty Yellow Tit,
easily recognised by its foppish little black-and-yellow
crest, is not very rare on the coast, but I have not
seen it in Bombay.
CHAPTER XX.
THE CROWS.
WE have now done with the Dentitostres and
come to the
Conirostre s ,
or Conical
Bills, Cuvi-
e r 's next
tribe. The
d i ffer ence
between
these two
tribes is one
that presents
itself to every
boy who
keeps pets.
The "soft-
billed "birds,
of which the
Robin or
Nightingale
may be taken
for an exam-
p 1 e, must
Black and Grey-necked Crows.
be fed on artificial foods representing, as nearly as
possible, the insects which are their natural diet.
They seem to be delicate and difficult to rear, but it
is only because you cannot give them exactly the
I 1 8 THE CROWS.
kind of food that their constitutions require. They
are like sailors fed on salt pork and ship's biscuit,
who must have a little lime juice regularly, or else
they will get scurvy. So these birds will get ill
unless you supply them with living insects occasion-
ally, and " Every Boy's Book" gives directions to
juvenile bird-fanciers for breeding meal-worms and
maggots. The " hard-billed " birds, on the contrary,
need little else than good seed and fresh water, for
that is their natural diet. For this reason the birds
of that tribe are more commonly kept as pets. Of
course there are many birds which do not fit quite
neatly into either division. The Starling, for exam-
ple, has not a very stout bill and will eat anything.
But this difficulty meets every system of classification.
Nature has not done birds up in bundles and labelled
them, and on whatever principle we attempt to sort
them, we soon find that there are many which seem
to belong to one lot in some respects and to another
lot in others. I have followed the arrangement
adopted by Dr. Jerdon, as I said at the beginning,
because his book is the only readable account of
Indian birds which yet exists, and it is not likely to be
superseded in our time. He divides the Conirostres,
as far as India is concerned, into four families, the
Crows, the Starlings, the Finches, and the Larks.
To begin with the first, there is surely little for me
to say about the Common Crow. It speaks for itself.
We all know enough about it. And yet this is not
true, for in another sense we never know enough
about it. The subject is inexhaustible. In any
company in India, if conversation flags, bring the
Crow upon the tapis and it will start into animation
THE CROWS. Iig
again. Zoologically considered, the Crow is merely
a bird of the corvine family, which is found abun-
dantly throughout the peninsula of India, and is, as
the phrase goes, " too well known to require descrip-
tion." But then its chief point is that you cannot
consider it zoologically, except, indeed, as you may
consider man zoologically, There are said to be men
of science in Germany who have succeeded in purging
their minds completely from all taint of sentiment and
unreason, and can think of man with scientific pre-
cision as one of the many species of the mamalian order
Quadrumana. But to most of us this is impossible.
We think habitually of man and animal as contrasted,
and the Crow takes its place in our minds with man,
not, indeed, as a kind of man, but as an appendage to
him, one of the conditions of his life, an element of
his social system. This is the peculiarity of the
Crow. It has separated itself from the category of
birds which live in the fields and woods and belong
to nature. It lives in towns and belongs to man in
the sense in which we contrast man and nature. Like
the Mahar outside an Indian village, whose perquisite
is the hides of all the cattle that die in the village, the
Crow lives outside the bungalow and claims the
refuse of all food eaten within it. But if you do not
provide a reasonable amount of refuse, the Crows
will come inside and help themselves, as the Mahars
will poison cattle if enough do not die of themselves ;
for there is no right to which the Crows cling more
tenaciously than the right to be fed by the man whose
compound they clean. Sometimes Crows feed on
fruits, or hunt for worms in ploughed fields, or gather
to catch the winged white-ants which issue from the
120 THE CROWS.
ground before rain. But that is as boys gather black-
berries, or trespass in a field and eat raw turnips.
Crows will not look to nature for a living. A " wild "
Crow, living in a forest or field and foraging for itself,
is a thing I have not seen.
Of course I am referring to the common, or " grey-
necked," Crow. The black Crow, which Jerdon calls
the Indian Corby, is different. Though it often
haunts our back premises in company with the others
and snatches a share of anything that may be going,
it is still a wild bird, and you will often find it at home
in the jungles, far from all human habitations. It is
very abundant on shady country roads, feeding on
the fruit of the banian tree or the peepul, and when
the traveller sits down in a cool place and lights a fire
to cook his mid-day meal, the black Crows see the
smoke from afar and come to wait upon him. They
kill lizards and spit frogs on their black beaks, and I
am afraid that eggs and young birds form no small
part of their diet. Compared with the grey-necked
Crow, the black species is not common in Bombay, but
it gets commoner as you go south and in some places
quite replaces the other. It is known to science as Cor-
vtts macrorhynchus. Macrorhynchus is a formidable-
looking word, but only means Big Beak. The common
grey-necked Crow has got the name of Corvus splen-
dens ; whether from the glossy blackness of its wings,
or the splendour of its impudence, I will not pretend
to say. It was once more aptly named Corpus impu-
dicus, and one could wish that name had remained.
Crows are fond of sleeping together. Near almost
every village there is a large tree which is the dormi-
tory, and to this they gather from long distances as
THE CROWS. 121
vening comes on. When the total eclipse of the sun
occurred in January 1898, the Crows of Viziadroog,
where I was encamped, were quite taken in and all
gathered together in the sleeping-tree. When day
reappeared, almost before they had got their heads
tucked in, they all started into the air with a simul-
taneous shout of surprise and indignation. They
seemed to think that a practical joke had been played
upon them. I do not know why they sleep together.
It may be for safety, for, though Crows have not
many enemies, there is a large horned owl which
wrings their necks at night. I esteem the horned owl
for that. It may seem uncharitable in me, but I con-
fess that I cannot extend to the Crow those feelings
with which I regard all other birds, I have never felt
a qualm of conscience about taking a Crow's life. It
is not their depredations, nor their impudence, nor
their rowdy noises. I could endure all these. What
I cannot forgive is the constant and ruthless massacre
of innocents that goes on where Crows are allowed to
have their own way. They watch every little bird
to find out if it has a nest, they count the days
tilt the first young sparrow flutters out on its untried
wings, they pounce upon it and carry it to the
nearest tree and hold it under one foot and pick it
to pieces, absolutely callous to the shrieks of the
parents as they flutter round, distracted but helpless.
For this I shoot the Crow without remorse.
Though they sleep together, the Crows do not
breed in company. Each pair makes its nest apart,
in a mango tree if there is one at hand. The nest is
a clumsy-looking structure, but very strongly put
together, and in the centre there is a neatly-made
16
122 THE CROWS.
hollow, the shape of a finger bowl, lined with coir, or
with horse-hair stolen from a mattress, or with what-
ever material can be had, not excepting brass wire
from old sodawater bottles ; for in Bombay the Crow
population has multiplied to such an extent of late
years that the competition for nesting materials has
become terrible. In Marine Lines, as the season
advances, the Crows patrol the road, or the garden-
walks, waiting for sticks to fall, or they get up into
the trees and tug at twigs which are still green and
will not come off. It is not many years since a pair
living in the Fort discovered a real El Dorado in an
Optician's shop. They worked that mine so
stealthily and cleverly that before they were discovered
they had succeeded in abstracting about Rs. 400
worth of spectacle frames, which they had worked up
into a very superior nest, combining durability and
lightness like a " helical tube." The museum of the
Bombay Natural History Society contains a ponderous
nest made entirely of iron wire, taken apparently
from the ruins of railway fences. There are generally
four eggs, of a dull bluish-green colour, blotched
with brown. They are laid in May, so that, if all
goes well, the youngsters will have arrived at the
most expensive age just when the monsoon comes,
bringing frogs and all manner of plunder. But if all
does not go well the mother and her naked infants
stand a chance of being washed out of bed together
some stormy night. In Canara the Crows will not
risk this, and have their nests at the end of the
monsoon. The eggs of the Black Crow are some-
what larger than those of the common kind, and its
nest is usually made earlier in the season.
THE CROWS. I 23
Though Crows are not gregarious, like Rooks,
I am certain there is such a thing as Crow society,
with its accepted rules of propriety and etiquette.
When two Crows quarrel, the neighbours always
arbitrate, and I have seen them helping the weaker
party by pulling off the other. They hold assemblies,
which certainly have a definite common purpose. We
cannot guess what that purpose is, but how should
we ? Could any intelligent Crow guess the purpose of
a meeting of our Municipal Corporation? Sometimes
also they combine clamorously to punish some
member of the community. I believe this is for an
offence against propriety. Crows are great sticklers
for propriety.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MYNAS.
THE European Starling is common enough in the
north of India, but does not roam so far south as
Bombay. Its place is taken, however, by a group
of birds which, though very differently dressed, can-
Brahminy ' Mynas.
not disguise their relationship to the starling, for
the family features are too plain. In the air they
have the same direct, business like flight ; on the
ground the same parade-step ; they have the same
flexible voice and talent for mimicry; they make
their nests in holes and lay blue eggs. Of course I
THE MYNAS. 125
mean the Mynas, which, among all classes of natives
who keep pets at all, are favourite cage-birds for
many reasons, but chiefly because they can be
taught to speak. The performance is rather like
a Punch-and-Judy dialogue, and you need to be
told what the bird is saying before you can recognise
it. But that matters little ; it amuses people who can
find little interest in the really amusing traits of the
bird's natural character.
For the Myna has a character. I once had a Myna
and a canary in cages which hung at my window.
A ruffianly crow came in one day and perched on the
top of the canary's cage. Of course the silly bird
fluttered all round the cage, clinging to the bars, and
gave the crow the chance it wanted. It caught a
leg in its powerful beak and tried to pull it through
the bars. But the canary's body could not pass
through, so the poor bird's leg was literally torn out
by the roots, and it died in a few minutes. I
suppose the crow swallowed the leg, and shortly
afterwards it returned, thinking to have a leg of
the Myna for its next course. I was in the room,
but it did not see me ; so, after glancing round
the room with a proprietary air, it bounced on to the
top of the Myna's cage. But the Myna, sitting on its
perch, knew it was quite safe and felt no agitation ;
so it was free to take an interest in the crow, and its
interest fixed instantly on an ugly black toe which
hung down through the bars over its head. It caught
that toe in its sharp beak and made an example of it,
I tell you, it was exhilarating to observe the sudden-
ness with which that crow jumped to the conclusion
that it had urgent business elsewhere. Here is the
126 THE MYNAS.
difference between a Myna and a canary. A canary
cannot learn that it is safe inside a cage. The
name of the common Myna, given it by Linnasus
himself, is Acridotheres tristis, which means the sad
grasshopper-hunter. Grasshopper-hunter is admir-
able, but why it should be called sad is a puzzle, for
no bird seems to be more uniformly in good spirits.
Jerdon suggests an explanation in its sober suit of
quaker brown, the " sad colour " of our forefathers.
The whole of its body is of this colour, getting grad-
ually paler on the underparts. Its head and throat
and breast are glossy black, but the black passes into
the brown without striking contrast. All is sober
and unobtrusive, yet the Myna never looks other-
wise than well-dressed. When it flies a white bar
opens out on the wing, and its tail is also bordered
with white. Its beak and legs are yellow, and there
is a small patch of bare yellow skin behind each eye.
No bird is a more characteristic feature of Indian life
than the Myna. It is everywhere, in town or village,
held or garden, sometimes walking after cattle and
catching the grasshoppers they startle, sometimes
patrolling a field on its own account, nodding its
head at every step. It is always among the scarlet
flowers of the Coral Tree when they are in bloom.
Mynas are eminently sociable. They go in pairs, or
small parties, talking a great deal. They sleep in
company like Crows, and jabber incredibly while
getting to bed. In the heat of the day a Myna likes
to retire to some cool, dark nook, in a shady tree, and
enjoy a siesta, or carry on a gentle soliloquy. Keeky^
keeky, keeky, it says to itself, then chitrr^ churr, kok,
kok, kok. Each time it says kok it points to the
THE MYNAS.
ground with its beak and bobs its head. What the
exercise means is more than I can tell. It is so hard
to understand a bird. A caged Myna lightens its
captivity by practising all the sounds which it hears.
But it is not necessary to cage a tame Myna. If you
get it young enough it will become a member of the
family and live about the house like the cat. Mynas
make their nests in holes and lay four or five blue
eggs. They have two or three broods in the year,
generally in the monsoon, when grasshoppers are
cheap and plentiful. In the jungles they will appro-
priate holes made by woodpeckers and barbets, or
find hollows in rotten boughs, but in a town there are
always enough of suitable holes to be had in walls
and roofs. They do not build in chimneys like Star-
lings, because there are no chimneys.
There is another species of Myna called by Jerdon
AcridotheresfuscuS) the Dusky Myna, which is so
like the common one that it is not usually distin-
guished, except by naturalists, but if you get a near
view of it you may recognise it at once by a little tuft,
or crest, not on the crown of its head, where birds
generally wear their crests, but on the bridge of its
nose. It also wants the little patch of yellow skin
behind the eye, and its general hue is more dusky.
This is more of a jungle bird than the other, and
therefore avoids Bombay, but it is common enough
on the other side of the harbour. The pale Bank
Myna (Acridotheres ginginianus), so common in
Guzerat, is not found here.
Next we have some charming birds belonging to
another branch of the Myna family. They are small-
er and daintier birds than the Common Myna, and
1 28 THE MYNAS.
walk less on the ground, for they live chiefly on fruit.
The commonest is the Brahminy Myna (Temenuchus
pagodarum), a good name, for it is a high-caste bird.
It is smaller than a Starling, but looks more stoutly
built, being fuller about the neck and shorter in the
tail. Its back and wings are ashy-brown, while the
throat, breast, and all the underparts are of a soft,
reddish-fawn, or terra-cotta colour. On its head it
has a crest of long, narrow, silky black feathers,
which lie gracefully on the back of its neck, except
when it raises them to express surprise. Its beak is
blue at the base and yellow at the point. With this
exception there is nothing gaudy about the bird, and
you almost need to have it in your hand to know
what a beauty it is. The way in which the soft
colours pass into each other and are shaded off on the
margins of the wings and tail cannot be told in
words. The Brahminy Myna is a regular frequenter
of the Coral Tree and the Silk-cotton Tree when in
flower, and of the Banian and Peepul when in fruit.
It is not uncommon in parts of Bombay. It breeds,
like its relations, in holes, and lays blue eggs. There
are usually some at the Crawford Market, for it is a
favourite cage-bird. It has a sweet voice and a little
song.
The Grey-headed Myna (Temenuchus malabaricus)
is very like the Brahminy, but all its colours are
paler and it has no black on the head. Its crest is
striped grey and white. I do not think it ever breeds
in this part of the country, but in the cold season,
or just after the rains, it haunts the Banian trees in
little flocks, picking holes in the bright red fruit. It
is a quiet bird, and you must look for it if you wish
THE MYNAS. I 29
to see it. Both this and the last fly like Starlings,
straight and swiftly.
The best-known of all the tribe among bird-fanciers
is the Bengal Myna, a big, rather coarse, glossy
black bird, with an orange-yellow beak and two
" ears " of bare yellow skin. But it is only a Bombay
bird in the sense that it is never absent from the
Crawford Market. Scarcely any bird in India is
held in higher esteem as a talker, for it has a rich
voice of great variety and compass and is really a
clever mimic. A friend of mine came into possession
of one which had taught itself the whole series of
noises with which a Hindoo lets the world know that
he is scouring his teeth and cleansing his mucous
membranes generally, and it used to rehearse these
in the morning. It had to be sent into exile till
chotee hazree was over.
There is yet another bird which, though not
usually called a Myna, must go with them. Un-
fortunately it lacks a good English name. Up-
country it is commonly called the Jowaree Bird, for
it is an incorrigible plunderer of ripening grain.
Jerdon calls it the Rose-coloured Starling (Pastor
roseus). This bird spends the sumrrier and brings
up its family somewhere in Syria, or Mesopotamia,
but almost before the rains are over it returns and
overruns India in vast hordes, driving the farmer
to despair. On the coast we know it best as the
most rowdy habitue of the Coral Tree and the Silk-
cotton Tree, already mentioned. These two trees,
botanically so different, unite in filling a very curious
place in the economy of nature. Soon after the
monsoon is over they part with every leaf and stancl
'7
I3O THE MYNAS.
out bare, gaunt, and thorny. Then, after an interval,
they hang out a signboard of scarlet, or crimson,
flowers at the end of every naked branch, to invite
the weary wayfarer to stop and have a drink. For
each separate blossom is a flowing bowl, and the
liquor in it is as delicious to a bibulous bird as
11 sherris sack" was to Falstaff. Every tree becomes
a public-house and a scene of revelry and riot. The
Crows are there, of course, and the King Crows and
the Mynas, and even the temperate Bulbul and the
demure Coppersmith, and many another, and here
and there a Palm Squirrel, taking his drink with
the rest, like a foreigner. But the rowdiest element
in all the motley rout is the jolly company of Rosy
Starlings. They drink and swagger and babble
and brawl, from before sunrise till the heat of noon-
day sends them off to sleep. But the days of riot
are soon over. By March the birds are getting
their new costume for the fashionable season in their
Syrian home. And a beautiful costume it is. The
head, with its long, silky crest, and the breast and
wings and tail are glossy black, but the back and all
the underparts, from the breast downwards, are of
a pure rosy-cream colour.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE WEAVER BIRDS.
AFTER the Mynas come the Fringillidas, or Finches,
the little seed-eating-
birds which form so
large a proportion of
our cage pets. Jerdon
divides them into several
[families, among which
he gives the first place to the Weaver Birds. There
are several species in India, but we know only
one, Ploceus baya^ the Weaver Bird par excellence
and the head of the clan. And we know it by
its works : of itself few of us know much ; most
of us nothing. It is like Cheops, whose pyramid
we gape at. Yet it were surely worth while to learn
something of the marvellous little workman who
weaves champagne bottles of grass and hangs them
upside down on the trees so securely that two monsoons
will not wash them away. That workman is a com.
1 32 THE WEAVER BIRDS.
monplace little bird, about the size of a sparrow and
marked very like a sparrow. It easily passes for a
sparrow and does not care, but on a near view the
two are easily distinguished, for a sparrow is grey and
brown, whereas the prevailing tone of a Weaver
Bird is yellow. Its underparts are all of a dull
yellow tint, and the feathers of the back and wings
are bordered with brownish-yellow. Its very bill is
yellow. As the hot season advances the male gets
itself a wedding suit, in which, I confess, it is rather
a dandy. The crown of its head and its breast then
become bright yellow and its face becomes black.
But it resumes its humble, workaday costume at the
end of the rains.
Weaver Birds are more than sociable. They not
only feed together in large numbers and sleep
together in thousands among the mangroves that
border all our large creeks, but they like to make
their nests and bring up their young in company.
At that time they become especially jovial and noisy.
The books all say that the Weaver Bird has no song,
and I will not maintain that its voice is musical, or
that it makes any pretence to be a soloist ; but it is
grand at a chorus. When a glorious company of
Weaver Birds join in song, the likeness to an after-
dinner performance of " He's a Jolly Good Fellow "
is most striking. Or sometimes I compare it to a
party of British soldiers returning home from a festive
meeting, whom the spirit of patriotism makes vocal.
To come to those wonderful nests. The birds usually
begin operations in July or August. They are whim-
sical in the choice of a site. One essential condition
js that the nest must hang from the end of a drooping
THE WEAVER 43IRDS. 13^
branch, with nothing directly under it, and, as a Palm
Tree affords many such situations, a palm tree, espe-
cially a Date Palm, is often fixed upon by a whole
company. In the museum of the Bombay Natural
History Society there is a branch of a Brab Palm with
fourteen nests attached to it. Where Palms are scarce
a thorny Babul or Bore tree, drooping over a tank, is a
favourite site for a colony. But you may find single
nests, or groups of nests, in all sorts of situations.
Jerdon says that in Burma the eaves of a thatched
bungalow are often fringed with nests. He counted
over a hundred hanging from the roof of a single
bungalow in Rangoon. One thing to note is that
there is never the slightest attempt at concealment.
The Weaver Bird will not elude its enemies : it defies
them. Having fixed on a site, the birds go to work
with a will, making their own yarn and weaving from
dawn till evening. Several kinds of material are
used. The best is very thin strips of cocoanut leaves.
The bird notches the edge of a leaf with its beak, and
then by main force tears off a long, thin fibre, scarcely
thicker than darning cotton. Any kind of rank grass
can be treated in the same way of course, and is much
easier to rend than a palm leaf, but the fibres are
softer and not nearly so strong. Grass nests are,
therefore, always more bulky and less closely woven
than those made of palm leaf. The process of build-
ing is as follows. The fibres are first wound and
twined very securely about the twigs and leaves at
the end of the branch, and then platted into each other
to form a stalk, or neck, several inches in length. As
this progresses it is gradually expanded in the form
of an inverted wine-glass, or a bell, till it is large
134 THE WEAVER BIRDS.
enough for the accommodation of the family, and then
the mouth of the bell is divided into two equal parts
by a strong band woven across it. This is a critical
stage in the progress of the work. For now the birds
can sit on the cross-band and judge how the nest
swings. If it is' badly balanced, they bring lumps of
clay and stick them on one side or the other till the
defect is remedied. At least this is Jerdon's explana-
tion of the curious patches of clay which are generally
found inside of Weaver Birds' nests. The native
theory is that they are wall brackets, in which fireflies
are stuck for the illumination of the nest. This is one
of those things which one cannot help washing were
true. The scientific spirit which we of this century
worship, with its relentless demand for whole burnt
offerings of sentiment and oblations of proof, is a
spirit of a dry wind, withering the garden of the soul.
But nobody really knows, except the Weaver Bird
itself, why those lumps of clay are stuck on the walls
of the nest. One thing certain is that, for some
reason or other, the birds often get dissatisfied with
the nest at this stage, and give it up and begin
another. In every colony of nests there are several
of these bells with a band across the mouth. In them
the cock-birds will sit in rainy weather, each chatter-
ing to his spouse as she broods on her eggs. But if
the nest, when it has reached that stage, pleases
them, they proceed to finish it. The hen sits on
the cross-band while her mate fetches fibres. He
pushes them through to her from the outside and she
returns them to him. So they weave, closing up the
bell on one side of the cross-band so as to form a
little hollow for the eggs, and prolonging the other
THE WEAVER BIRDS. 135
into a long tunnel or neck. The rim of this neck is
never bound or hemmed. It grows thinner and more
flimsy to the end, which is frayed out, affording no
firm hold to an enemy. The most daring squirrel
will not attempt to clamber round it and get into the
nest, especially if there is a well beneath. The
mother and her young in their water-tight and wind-
proof chamber will swing in perfect security from
every foe but man. There is a curious difference of
opinion about the number of eggs laid by the Weaver
Bird. Jerdon says two, or at the most three, and is
supported by Hume and other good authorities ; but
the late Mr. Barnes protests that he has examined
scores of nests and never found fewer than four, and
sometimes as many as six. I have never been a
plunderer of nests, but from such experience as I have
I should be inclined to agree with Jerdon. It is not
impossible that the nests in which Barnes found five
or six eggs were chummeries occupied by more than
one family.
It used to be the fashion to speak of beasts and
animals as being endowed with some mysterious
faculty called " instinct," which was a sort of compen-
sation to them for the want of reason. When a bird
made a wonderful nest it was supposed to be working
by this faculty, without using its intelligence. I
think this way of speaking, or thinking, is pretty well
exploded now, and I should like to explode it a little
more. It is quite true that the lower animals have
by inheritance the knowledge of many things which
we have to learn for ourselves ; but the difference is
one of degree, not of kind. So when a bird does a
clever thing you may be sure it is a clever bird*
136 THE WEAVER
The Weaver Bird is no exception. If taken young
it may be taught almost anything. Jerdon quotes
the following account of its performances from Mr.
Blyth :— " The truth is that the feats performed
by trained Bayas are really very wonderful, and
must be witnessed to be fully credited. Exhibitors
carry them about, we believe, to all parts of the country,
and the usual procedure is, when ladies are present,
for the bird, on a sign from its master, to take a
cardamom, or sweetmeat, in its bill and deposit it
between a lady's lips, and repeat this offering to every
lady present, the bird following the look and gesture
of its master. A miniature cannon is then brought,
which the bird loads with coarse grains of powder,
or more commonly with small balls of powder made
up for the purpose ; it next seizes and skilfully uses
a small ramrod, and then it takes a lighted match from
its master, which it applies to the touch-hole. We
have seen the little bird apply the match five or six
times successively before the powder ignited, which it
finally did with a report loud enough to alarm all the
crows in the neighbourhood, while the little Baya
remained perched on the cannon, apparently quite
elated with its performance."
Jerdon also says that the Weaver Bird is very ready
to make its nest and bring up a family in captivity if
it is only allowed room enough.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE AMADAVATS AND THE MUNIAS.
FROM "Amidavad," the learned Dr. Fryer tells us,
come small
birds, "spot-
ted with red
and white
no b i gger
than mea-
sles," of
which " fifty
in a cage"
make an ad-
m i r able
chorus. That
was more
than two
hundred
years ago.
I do not
know whe-
ther they still
come from
Ahmedabad,
but the name
has stuck to
them and they still come, more than " fifty in a cage "
sometimes, to people our aviaries. They need no
description, for everybody knows them. They arc
W kite-backed and Brown M
138 THE AMADAVATS AND THE MUNI AS.
the tiniest of cage-birds, and have red beaks : whence
they are sometimes called Waxbills. The Munias are
twice as large, though still very small, and have
black, or slaty, bills. But they are all one brother-
hood, and will live together in amity, though you
pack them so thick that some have to find a perch on
the backs of others. So you will find them packed in
the cages at the Crawford Market. But they are
not unhappy, like most of the birds there, for their
wants are small. Give them dry seed and clean water
and they will look on the bright side of things. It is
to this happy disposition that they owe their popularity
as pets, for they have no accomplishments and are as
silly and uninteresting as birds can be. The common
Amadavat has, indeed, a little piping song, which is
sweet, though feeble, and the Brown Munia some-
times warbles a love-sick ditty to its mate, hopping
absurdly with its legs straddled out, but you must put
your hand to your ear to catch the sound. And the
rest confine themselves to a note of one syllable,
which they repeat about thirty-five times in a minute
when they are in good spirits. But it is a pleasant
note, and I think a cage-full of Amadavats and
Munias in the verandah always adds to the cheerfulness
of the house. The common Amadavat (Estrelda
amandavd) is found in most parts of India, but I
doubt its right to be called a native of Bombay.
There are always some in the island, and I have seen
a pair making a nest at Tardeo, but I suspect they
are all escaped prisoners. The male Amadavat has
two suits in the year. In summer it is a sparkling
gem, splashed all over the face, breast, and back with
crimson, which, however, keeps its brilliance only in
THE AMADAVATS AND THE MtJNIAS. 139
the light of the sun. In caged birds it becomes brick-
red. In winter the crimson feathers are mostly doffed
and both sexes dress alike.
There is another lovely Amadavat, which Jerdon
calls the Green Waxbill (Estrelda formosa). It is
light green above, pale yellow beneath, and prettily
banded on the sides. This is certainly not a Bombay
bird, though common enough in cages, together with
some beautiful foreign species, which need not be
mentioned here.
Of the Munias there are at least two species which
seem to be really resident in Bombay. The common-
est is Jerdon's White-backed Munia (Munia striata}^
a black-and-white bird with a bluish beak. The
" smalT' of its back and its underparts, from the
breast downwards, are white. All the rest is very
dark brown, almost black in parts. Then there is the
Spotted Munia (M. undulata or puncttilata), of a rich
brown colour, passing into chestnut on the face and
throat. The underparts are white, or greyish, with
zebra stripes on the side. Young birds are of a dull,
earthy-brown colour. Two other species may be
described here, because they belong to our Presidency
and are common in cages. One is the Black-headed
Munia (M. malacca}^ a handsome bird, which has
its home in Canara and Malabar. Its head, throat,
and breast are glossy black, and its back, wings, and
tail bright chestnut. Below the breast it is white.
The other is the Plain Brown Munia (M. malabarica),
which may be found wild in Bombay, for it is every-
where, and in the Deccan is one of the commonest of
small birds, making its silly nest in every wayside
bush for schoolboys and crows to do what they like
THE AMADAVATS AND THE MU
with. It is the utterest simpleton of a not-talented
family. Its nest is constructed, after the Munia
fashion, of fine grass, in a globular form, and should
contain, I believe, about half a dozen pure white
eggs. But the Brown Munia is " promiscuous " in
family matters. It will lay eggs in a neighbour's
nest instead of its own, or because it has none of its
own, and its neighbour will never be so unneigh-
bourly as to object. Sometimes two or more families
will chum together, and others will use the nest as
a dormitory, leaving an egg, perhaps, as payment.
So it happens that any number of eggs may be found
in a Brown Munia's nest, some fresh, some "cook-
ing," and some beyond even that. Theobald found
twenty-five eggs in one nest. In an aviary, if you
provide little nest-boxes, these birds will behave in
the same happy-go-lucky way. I do not understand
how they succeed in keeping their place in the
world and escaping extermination, but they are
making nests and laying plentiful eggs all the year
round, so I suppose that the doctrine of chances
secures a certain percentage of offspring. The Brown
Munia differs from the other species in having a
pointed tail and not holding it up. It is a light-
coloured bird, pale-brown when fresh caught, but
inclining to French-grey if kept out of the sun.
Its tail is black, and its breast and underparts are
almost white.
I once saw a professional bird-catcher on Malabar
Hill trapping Munias. Nothing is easier. I have
trapped a good many myself. If you put out a cage
with a few birds in it, every passer-by of the same
species will come down to inquire after their health,
THE AMADAVATS AND THE MUNIAS.
and if you put an empty cage beside the other, and
scatter some seed in it, they will hop in quite good-
naturedly. All you want is some contrivance to
close the door upon them. When they find them-
selves prisoners they are not the least discomposed,
but make themselves at home and behave in a friend-
ly manner to the former occupants.
There are many kinds of foreign Munias, and some
species from other parts of India, which find their
way to the market and thence to the aviaries, but
those I have mentioned are all that we have to do
with here.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS, AND LARKS.
The House Sparrow is one of the common birds
of Bombay.
It is a hand-
somer bird
here than
it is in Eng-
land. Its
colours are
brighter and
better defin-
ed. On this
account a n
ill-ad vi sed
attempt was
made to raise
it to the rank
of a distinct
species, and
it appears in
Jerdon a s
Passer indi-
<cus. No good
C O m e S of Black-headed Bunting an.i Finch Lark.
these u n-
necessary distinctions. The Sparrow is a cosmo-
politan, and its name in science is Passer domes-
ticus. It is a vulgar little body, which tries to
THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS, AND LARKS. 143
be a gentleman and attains to being a gent. In
dress it affects smartness and in manners gentility.
In the company of ladies it becomes a masher.
Nevertheless, I like the little Sparrow out of doors.
But in this country you cannot keep it out of doors.
It comes in and makes up its mind that it will have
its nest in the corner of your ceiling. And when a
Sparrow makes up its mind nothing will unmake it
except the annihilation of that Sparrow. Its faithful
spouse is always, and very strongly, of the same mind
as itself. So they set to work to make a hole in the
corner of the ceiling-cloth, and they tear and tug
with an energy which leaves no room for failure.
Then they begin to fetch hay. The quantity of hay
which a couple of Sparrows will carry in a day is
almost miraculous. Most of it tumbles down in their
efforts to stuff it into the hole, for they always bring
larger loads than they can manage. I remember a
pair which made a hole directly over one of the pic-
tures on my drawing-room wall, and I declare
solemnly that you might have fed a horse on the hay
which I removed daily and hourly from behind that
picture. This savours of exaggeration, perhaps, but
I mean a hack-victoria horse. At such times the
House Sparrow requires an antidote, a u Gem Air-
gun," or something of that sort. I once saw, with
unfeigned satisfaction, a pair of Sparrows making
their nest in the top of a street-lantern near to the
Victoria Station. They had no idea that that lamp
was lighted every night after they had gone to bed,
and, when they arrived each morning and found yes-
terday's work reduced to ashes, they did no doubt
what a brave Sparrow always does in such circum-
144 THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS, AND LARKS.
stances : they looked adversity in the face and began
again. I hope they are at it still. That was ten
years ago.
There are several near relations of the House Spar-
row which have not attached themselves to man, like
it, and one of them, the Yellow-throated Sparrow
(Passer flavicollis), is common enough in Bombay.
It is a more elegant and shapely bird than our house
pest, but an unmistakeable Sparrow. Its colour is a
pretty, uniform, pale ashy-brown, with a double
white band on the wing and a touch of dark chestnut
on the shoulder. The underparts are a little paler
than the upper. It gets its name from a patch of
pure yellow on the throat, but you must get near it
to see that. It makes its nest during the hot season
in any convenient hole, often outside, but never
inside, of a house. The end of a hollow bamboo
affords exactly the sort of accommodation it requires,
for which reason you will find it haunting scaffoldings,
plague huts, and other forms of temporary archi-
tecture. When the hen is on the eggs the cock sits
within hearing and chirps by the hour with the true
Sparrow accent. The eggs are usually three or four
in number and of a greenish-white colour, thickly
blotched and clouded with brown.
We have one Bunting which almost takes the
place in India of the Yellow-hammer at home, swarm-
ing about fields and hedges and singing with more
cheer than music. But it is with us only in the cold
season, being a Greek, or Syro-Phcenician, by birth.
On a careless view the Black-headed Bunting (Euspiza
tnelanocephalci) may pass for a Weaver Bird on
account of its yellow front, but it is a larger and
?HE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS AND LARKS. 145
noticeably longer bird, and its colours are different.
In a mature bird the whole head and face are black
and contrast with the bright yellow of the breast.
The shoulders and upper back are rich chestnut.
In the Deccan the Black-headed Bunting visits the
bajree and jowaree fields in hordes and takes toll from
the poor farmer. Many are trapped and brought to
Bombay for sale. They are handsome but uninter-
esting pets.
The Red-headed, or Chestnut-headed, Bunting
(Euspiza hiteola] is another species which is not
unlikely to be met with in Bombay.
The Larks constitute our last group of little seed-
eating birds. After them we pass on to pigeons and
game-birds. In a former paper I referred to the
sort of man who holds the dogma that in India
birds do not sing. Of course that man never
saw a Lark in this country and does not believe it
contains such a thing. He disputed the point with
me once from dinner till bed-time, propping himself
with pegs as he went along. As a matter of fact the
Indian Skylark (Alauda gulgula), which is scarcely
distinguishable from the English bird in colour and
not distinguishable in habit or song, is found through-
out this country wherever there is an acre of corn land
or open grassy ground. I have pleasant recollections
of standing on the Flats in Bombay and watching it
" float and run in the golden lightning of the sunken
sun," till it was out of sight, and then listening to
the shower of melody which it continued to pour
down. I suppose it is less common there now.
Town sweepings and refuse are not conducive to
Larks.
146 THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS AND LARKS.
There are two other species of Larks found through-
out the Presidency, which may easily be confounded
with the true Skylark. The chief difference is that
they have both a sharp-pointed crest rising from the
crown of the head. Jerdon calls one of them the
Malabar Crested Lark (Alauda malabarica] and the
other the Small Crested Lark (Spisalauda devd).
They both soar and sing, but I am ashamed to say
that I know very little about their song, or I should
be ashamed if I had not noticed that Jerdon and
Barnes and Gates all seem to avoid saying anything
definite on the subject, from which I infer that they
knew no more than I. The fact is that when the Lark
is singing it is generally out of sight, or too high up to
be distinguished clearly, so it is not easy to be sure
which species you are listening to. It seems to follow
that there cannot be a very marked difference in their
songs. The Small Crested Lark at any rate is very
highly esteemed by natives, especially Mahomedans,
both as a songster and a mimic. They keep it in a
very small cage, wrapped in folds of cloth which keep
out every ray of light. I suppose the idea is that a
hermit's cell is the nearest approach to heaven, but it
is a curious answer to Shelley's question—
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain,
What fields or waves or mountains,
What shapes of sky or plain ?
It succeeds. Withdrawn from all terrestrial distrac-
tions, the birds sing as they do when they are
" ringed with the azure world."
Besides these we have two birds of the Lark tribe
which are not exactly Skylarks. They do not sing
THE SPARROWS, BUNTINGS AND LARKS. 147
at heaven's gate, but they try to keep up the tradi-
tions of the family by soaring to a little height
and then closing their wings and warbling, or whist-
ling, as they fall. Jerdon calls them Finch Larks.
The commonest is the Black-bellied Finch Lark
(Pyrrhidauda grisea)^ a happy little dust-coloured bird
with a very squat figure. The breast and underparts
of the male are black and there is a black cross on
the throat. You may disturb this bird at its dust
bath on any of the roads that cross the Flats. The
other species is the Rufous-tailed Finch Lark {Ammo-
manes phoenicura), a large, dark brown bird, easily
recognised by a rich rusty red colour about the tail.
It also has a noticeably squat figure, too broad for
its size. It goes in pairs and may be seen anywhere
in the open region between Tardeo, Worlee, and Parel.
All the Larks make their nests on the ground, or
rather lay their eggs on the ground, for there is
sometimes not much nest. They usually choose the
hot season, when the ground is dry, and their dingily-
speckled eggs are hard to find.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE PIGEONS AND DOVES.
EVERY system of classification puts the pigeons and
doves Ln
an order
by [them-
selves, for
they are
distin-
guished
from a 1 1
other birds
bynotone,
but many,
family
features,
which can-
not be mis-
take n .
Their
beaks are
swollen
and soft at
the base,
but hard at
the point.
Their eyes Turth Doves'
are large and lustrous, and set far back in the
head, which is small. Their bodies are compact
THE PIGEONS AND DOVES. 149
and shapely, their tails neither very long nor very
short, their wings generally fitted for swift and
strong flight. They rarely carry any meretricious
ornament, such as crests, or trains, or fancy plumes,
but they are all beautiful and some of them
exquisitely lovely. Yet their loveliness is not
that of golden orioles and kingfishers, but rather
of clouds and distant hills and soft sunsets. Nor
is their beauty in their feathers only ; their eyes
and their feet, and even their beaks, match their
plumage and complete the effect. I think also
that all the motions and attitudes of pigeons
are more graceful than those of other birds. But
these are outward features. There are also inward
characters by which the tribe is not less markedly
distinguished. They are all vegetarians, some
feeding on grain and some on fruit, but refusing
animal-food in every shape. It is said, indeed, that
they sometimes eat snails, but, if this is true, I
believe they must have swallowed them by mistake
for seeds. Such mistakes will happen to all of us.
I knew a person whose fate it was once to mistake
lizard's eggs for small white " sweeties." But let
us leave that subject and get back to pigeons. They
drink like horses, and not by sips as other birds do.
They all lay white eggs, never more than two in
number, and make simple, flat nests of twigs, which
they generally place in trees or bushes, but some-
times in holes. They never sing, nor chirp, nor
screech. Their voice is a plaintive moan, or coo,
verging sometimes on a mellow whistle. But their
highest distinction lies in the strength of their social
affections and the purity of their domestic life, In
I5O THE PIGEONS AND DOVES.
these respects they arc far ahead of the majority of
the human race. Polygamy and polyandry are alike
unknown among them. They are all monogamous,
and, as far as my observation goes, a pair once united
remain true to each other till death do them separate.
Their arts of love and courtship are strangely like
our own, and after they are married they are always
assuring each other of their affection by pretty tokens
of tenderness. They are also devoted to their children.
I had a pair of pigeons of which the hen died suddenly,
leaving two naked and helpless infants. I thought
they must die, but the father took the whole care of
them on himself and brought them up successfully.
After all this, it is painful to say, what is never-
theless true, that pigeons appear to have been
designed in a special degree for the food of other
creatures. Being, as I have said, strict vegetarians,
their plump bodies are both wholesome and tasty. In
this opinion hawks and cats are at one with man.
And having no means of protection and no resource
in danger, except their swiftness, they are fair game.
But they hold their own and multiply, for, though
they lay only two eggs at a time, they go on making
nest on nest all the year through — in warm countries
at least. A pair of domestic pigeons, if provided
with two nest boxes, will have eggs in the second
before the young are out of the first.
The whole tribe may be divided for our purposes
into three groups, namely, Pigeons, Turtle Doves
and Fruit Pigeons. We have one of each in Bom-
bay. The Blue Rock, parent of all domestic pigeons,
is one of the commonest birds of Bombay. It differs
from the Blue Rock of Europe in having the lower
THE IMC, ICONS AND DOVKS. 151
part of the back ashy instead of pure white, and,
as this difference is constant, our bird has been
separated under the name Columba intermedia, but
it is in all other respects the same bird. It has been
less affected by domestication than any other bird
or beast which man has taken under his care, except
the Guinea Fowl. I do not refer, of course, to fancy
Pigeons, — Pouters and Fantails and the like. I
regard these as monstrosities, like the Japanese fishes
with spare heads and tails. The ordinary domestic
Pigeon, which is kept for practical purposes, differs
from the original stock in scarcely anything but
colour. Accordingly it "reverts" to a state of
nature without difficulty, and many white and parti-
coloured pigeons may be seen about the Fort, which
have deserted some dovecote for a life of greater
freedom, or perhaps eloped with some blue lover.
But the great majority of the birds are pure Blue
Rocks that have never known the care of man. The
race is found in every part of India, breeding on
cliffs, or in the sides of wells, or under railway
bridges, and plundering the peafields for miles
around. They are attracted to Bombay by two things,
plentiful house accommodation and the benevolence
of pious Hindoo grain merchants.
We have also one Turtle Dove, the species which
Jerdon calls the Plain Brown Dove (Turtur cavi-
bayensis). It is a humble little bird, of an earthy-
brown colour, passing into slaty-gray on the wings
and tail, and tinged on the head, neck and breast,
with that tender tint, peculiar to doves, which the
natural history books call " vinaceous," like a faded
claret stain on the table cloth. On each side of the
152 THE PIGEONS AND DOVES,
neck there is a miniature chessboard in red and black.
The feet are red. That this kind of dove should be
found only in Bombay is a very curious fact, which I
do not know how to account for. India is rich in
species of doves, some of which are widely distri-
buted and some rather local. All over the plains
of the Deccan two species divide the land. The
large, pale-gray Ringdove (Turtur risoria} swarms
in the open country, and the little Turtle Dove
above-mentioned frequents the stations and gardens.
In Poona it is the " common or garden " Dove,
walking in the middle of the paths and uttering
its broken disyllabic coo from the pricklypear
hedges. But you may go down the whole west
coast, from Bombay southwards to Malabar, without
meeting it, or the Ringdove either. Their place is
taken by the beautiful Spotted Dove, with its
mournfully sweet voice. On the mainland and
islands just across our harbour it is very plentiful ; but
I have never seen it in Bombay. The doves I have
met with about Cumballa and Malabar Hills all
belong to the species so common in Poona. I do not
know whether it ever breeds in Bombay. Elsewhere
it makes its nest in a prickly-pear, or any other thick
bush, if you can apply the word nest to a flimsy
platform of sticks, so thin that the two white eggs
can be seen through it from below.
The name of the Plain Brown Dove in Jerdon is
Turtur cambayensis^ but in later books T. senegalensis.
The Spotted Dove is T. suratensis. These names
are historical monuments, indicating the places from
which the first specimens of these doves found their
way to Europe.
THE PIGEONS AND DOVES. 153
The Fruit Pigeons are green birds, which try to be
parrots, but nature has stamped them doves. They
live entirely on fruit, which they swallow whole, not
having parrot beaks to carve it with. A very wide
gape and a most capacious and elastic throat make
amends to some extent for this defect, but still the
Fruit Pigeon is obliged to do without mangoes and
guavas. It finds compensation in the many varieties
of wild figs which every forest in India produces in
such liberal profusion. When a fig tree fruits, it
fruits all over and all at once, offering a feast to the
whole country such as a Rajah gives when an heir is
born to his throne ; and as mendicant Brahmins
gather from distant provinces to the Rajah's feast, so
the Fruit Pigeons from afar flock together to the tree
while it lasts, and gorge themselves twice a day, first
about 8 in the morning, and again about 4 in the after-
noon. Then is the time to shoot them, for they are
excellent eating, especially if their tough skins have
been taken off before cooking. It is difficult at first
to see them, for they are verdant like the foliage
among which they sit strangely silent and motionless,
bat after much peering among the leafy boughs you
may catch sight of a tail oscillating slowly like a
pendulum. There is a solitary green bird, sitting like
a wooden figure. You fire and two fall and a dozen
fly off. If you are as other men you will probably
utter loud and naughty words, for if you had known
there were so many birds you might easily have had a
second shot at them as they flew. But if you are wise,
you will rule your spirit and be still. For there may
be a score of pigeons in the tree yet, and others will
come in small parties from time to time, so that, with
20
154 THE PIGEONS AND DOVES.
patience, you may make a very respectable bag before
the feeding hour is over. Then remorse will have its
turn, perhaps, as you gather up the fallen and see
what perfect loveliness you have destroyed for the
sake of your stomach. Body and wings are vivid
green, becoming almost yellow on the breast and
under parts, head and tail are pure dove gray, a
slanting yellow bar lights up each wing, and the
shoulder is finished off with a splash of lilac. The
feet are orange yellow and the eyes carmine with a
narrow outer ring of the most intense blue. This is
Jerdon's Southern Green Pigeon (Crocopus chlori-
gaster], which is the common species of the Bombay
Presidency. My reason for counting it among the
Birds of Bombay is that I believe it has been seen
about Malabar Point ; and indeed, where Banian and
Peepul trees are so plentiful, it is not likely to be
absent,
CHAPTER XXVI.
POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS.
THE next great Order of birds, of which the domestic
moorghee is for ever the type, is by no means so
homogeneous as the Pigeons. Indeed, the variety
of forms and fashions in which it exhibits itself has
,it v,;-.y,.
1'fc'Il
Bush Quails.
no parallel except among fashionable womankind.
Some of the Pheasants have tails twice as long as
their bodies ; the Quail has a tail, but you must
search for it if you wish to see it ; the Peacock has an
average tail, but the feathers of the back above it are
developed into a train four feet long. Head-dresses
are as various, The Peacock wears a corona of
156 POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS.
peculiar, racket-shaped feathers ; the domestic Cock a
fleshy comb and wattles ; the Turkey an extensile red
nose, while some of the Pheasants have beautiful
crests. To come to colour, that mixture which is
known as " game," is very much in vogue. It con-
sists of light upon dark shades of brown, in bars,
or borders, or little splashes, or fine wavy lines, a
sort of tartan, always the same in character, but
varying in detail with each clan. This is the costume
of Quails and Partridges and many others through
life, and it is characteristic of the young of all, or
almost all. But the aristocracy of the race, the
Peafowls and Pheasants and Jungle Cocks, when
they come of age, are apparelled with an extravagance
of splendour which no other race of bird can ap-
proach, except the Humming Birds. This finery is
usually the peculiar badge of the male. The other
sex is attired with modesty, though always taste-
fully and often beautifully. This is doubtless con-
nected with another point in which these birds differ
from Pigeons, namely, that they are nearly all
polygamists. To win a harem and keep it is for them
success in life. To this end the young beau must
dress and strut and dance and bow and scrape and
practise all the arts that enslave the female heart,
and he must fight too. Almost all the birds of this
order are armed with spurs on their legs and practise
the art of fence from their very chicken-hood. If one
has a harem it follows that many must do without
wives. These are the unsuccessful, which go about
alone, moody and resentful, trying to sow dissension
in the homes of the more lucky, sometimes getting
thrashed for their pains and sometimes thrashing the
POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS. 157
master of the house and taking possession of his wives,
who are nothing loth. This form of social life has also
been tried among men, but its influence on character
has not proved elevating. It does not tend to produce
good fathers nor worthy sons, as David found out
and Solomon too. And among gallinaceous birds the
father does not take much interest in his offspring.
The mother retires into solitude and brings them
up herself. Fortunately they need far less care than
the young of other birds generally. Born on the
ground, they get on their own legs as soon as they
leave the egg, and they do not open their little mouths
to be fed, but pick up food for- themselves, the mother
showing them the way. So they are very soon able
to shift for themselves, though they follow the mother
for months. Under these conditions a mother can
manage a much larger family than if she had to feed
each one with a spoon, and the mothers of this order
are usually like the old woman who lived in a shoe, as
I remember her represented in my early picture books.
But there is usually only one brood in the year.
Gallinaceous birds are not musical ; in fact, there
is a defect in their vocal organs, so that they cannot
modulate their voices. They utter clucks or clicks,
or a long shrill note, dislocated in the middle,
which is called a crow. Jerdon quotes the obser-
vation that there is an analogy in many points be-
tween this order and the Ruminants among beasts,
namely, the cattle and sheep and deer. Certainly
the gallinaceous birds appear to be even more dis-
tinctly designed for food than the Pigeons. There
is no race of birds that man persecutes more per-
sistently.
158 POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS.
This is a very long preface, but in truth there is
little else to be said, for the gallinaceous order is
almost unrepresented among the wild birds of
Bombay. From a sporting paper that once flourished
amongst us it appears that, in the early years of
the century, when a Griffin arrived, it was considered
a good joke to lend him a couple of pariah dogs,
with ears and tails cropped, and send him to Old
Woman's Island (i.e. Colaba) to shoot Partridges ;
but I do not know whether the point of the joke
was that there were Partridges in Old Woman's
Island or that there were none. There are none now.
On the other side of the harbour the Painted
Partridge (Francolinus pictiis) is still found and
would be plentiful if so many were not snared during
the breeding season for the Bombay market. I
caught one once on Cumballa Hill, or rather my
dog did, but it had evidently escaped from the hands
of the executioner. The Grey Quail and the Rain
Quail spread everywhere during the cold season,
but there is scarcely an acre of ground left in Bombay
on which they could find a living. There is one
bird, however, of that family which can still make
itself happy among us. I mean the Rock Bush
Quail, as Jerdon calls it (Perdicida asiaticci), though
it is rather a miniature Partridge than a Quail. It
is a globular bird, about the size of a cricket ball,
and nearly the same colour from the point of view
from which it is generally seen. That is when you
put up a covey out of a bush, and it explodes like
a shell, the fragments flying in all directions. They
do not fly far, but drop into bushes again and crouch
for a while in silence. Then one and another utters
POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS. 1 59
its soft call-note, and is answered from different
directions, and the covey is soon united again.
They live habitually in bushes and hedges, but come
out into the open to feed early in the morning and
again in the evening, moving softly with no visible
feet. You may watch them if you keep very still,
and it is a pretty sight. Seen at close quarters the
Bush Quail is rather a handsome bird, with fat cheeks
and a round good-natured face. Though the general
colour is rather a dull brown, each feather is prettily
freckled with black and buff. The male is much
darker above than the female, but his under parts are
white, banded with black, and his chin and throat are
bright chestnut. Nobody shoots the Bush Quail,
which is not worth much for the table; but it is snared
by natives, and you will often find them for sale
in the Crawford Market. It lays six or seven pale
creamy eggs, about the end of the rains, under a bush
or tuft of grass.
There is another group of small game birds known
as Bustard Quails, or Button Quails, which has cost
the classificators(this word is not in the dictionary, but
\ cannot dispense with it) no small perplexity. They
mostly want the hind toe (the birds I mean, not the
classiricators) and have other peculiarities, on account
of which they are given a whole Order to themselves
in "The Fauna of British India." Jerdon puts them
at the end of the game birds as a Family. They are
quiet, shy birds, that live solitary lives in fields and
scrub jungle, creeping about among the grass and
feeding on seeds and insects. If you chance to tread
on one's toes it will start out of the grass and fly
swiftly for a few yards and drop again. And this is
i6o POULTRY AND GAME BIRDS.
all you will ever see of it. But you may hear it. In
the morning and evening, and even at dead of night, it
gives vent to some feeling in one of the strangest
sounds ever uttered by bird. Jerdon describes it as " a
loud, purring call." To me it suggests a nail drawn
across the teeth of a sonorous comb of endless length.
If it proceeds from the lungs of the bird, then the
mystery is still unsolved how the quantity of air which
must be required to keep up such a sustained effort can
be compressed into so small a body. One of the eccen-
tricities of the Bustard Quail is that the female makes
all the noise. The male, as far as I know, is silent.
He, is smaller than she, and though I cannot say
whether he is literally henpecked, there can be little
doubt that he is l sair hauden doun.' He has to stay
at home and mind the babies while she goes gadding
about and fighting with her female neighbours. This
is not scandal, but a fact. She differs from him in
having a good deal of black on the head, throat
and breast. The general colour of both is reddish
brown, marked- with a game pattern of fine, black,
cross lines, with buff edges to the feathers. I am
speaking of the species which Jerdon calls the Black-
breasted Bustard Quail (T-urnix taigoor). There are
two others, but this is the one that makes the curious
noise described above, and the only one, I think, that
is likely to be found in Bombay. I once came upon
its nest in June, not far from Bombay. It was a most
artistic structure for a Quail to build, completely dom-
ed over with fine grass, with only a little hole at one
side for the owner to go in and out by. I did not catch
the bird, so it may have been one of the other species,
but there is not much difference.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PLOVERS.
WE come now to the Fifth Order of birds, namely,
the Gralla-
tores. Gral-
lator means
one who
goes on
stilts, and
this Order
includes all
those long-
s h a n k e d
birds which
bare their
legs and
walk about
in shallow
waters, and
also many
which do not
go into water
but walk
upon dry
ground on
stilts. It
must be admitted that this Order comprises a very
mixed lot, differing from each other in habits and
manner of life as well as in outward form and inward
31
Red-wattled Lapwing.
1 62 THE PLOVERS.
structure. Long-leggedness is almost the only com-
mon feature. They are divided into five Tribes, and
these again into many Families. The First Tribe
contains the Ostrich and Emu and other giant fowls,
whose wings are reduced to stumps for growing
feathers to ornament ladies' hats. These are the
Cursores, or Runners, of some authors. Next come
the Bustards, Floricans, Plovers, and all that lot,
which also run well, but can fly too. Like the Ostrich,
they have no hind toe. As they never perch on trees,
or anywhere else, a hind toe would be a superfluity.
They all lay their eggs on the ground, and the young
run as soon as they are hatched. In this Tribe there
are some which must be noticed here. The Lapwing,
Peewit, or Plover, which has the misfortune to lay
fashionable eggs in England, is not found here, but it
has a near relation which is one of our most familiar
birds. It has no crest, but on its cheeks there are
two bright red lappets, like the wattles of a cock, and
Jerdon calls it the Red-wattled Lapwing (Lobivanelhts
goensis). It is a greenish-brown bird with a good
deal of black and white upon it. The head is black,
with the throat, down to the upper part of the breast.
Below this the under parts, with the lining of the
wings, are pure white, as you see when it flies. But
why should I describe the Lapwing? It needs no
description and wants no introduction. It introduces
itself to you ; impresses itself on you ; dins itself
into you. Where it sprang from, I cannot tell, but
there it is in the air, circling round and round, now
far, now very near, now high, now low, now seeming
to go, but wheeling round and coming swiftly back
again ; for it will not go. And all the time it is
THE PLOVERS. 163
reiterating, with piercing emphasis, that mysterious
taunt, " Did you do it ? Did you do it ? Pity to do
it." What does the creature mean? I have done
nothing. Suddenly its mate springs into visibility
and joins it. I have a suspicion, a strong suspicion,
that somewhere on the ground, not far from my feet,
there are four stone-coloured eggs, with black blotches
on them and like pegtops in shape, arranged in a
cross with their points inwards. But it is no use
looking for them. The Lapwing is such an accom-
plished liar that it will throw you off the scent one
way. or another. The poet has said it,
" The lapwing- lies,
Says here when it is there."
It is altogether a wonderful character. It seems
to do without food and sleep. As regards food, you
never find it where there is anything to eat, and as
regards sleep, the natives have a saying that it sleeps
on its back with its legs turned up, for it says, " If
the sky should fall, I will catch it on my feet ; " but I
suspect the chief point of this saying is that it cannot
be contradicted, for nobody ever caught a Lapwing
asleep.
There is another kind of Lapwing, with yellow
instead of red wattles on its cheeks. Otherwise it is
very like the common one, but somewhat paler in
colour and with less black on it. There is a syllable
less in its cry. It, however, likes a dry climate, and
I have not often seen it on the coast.
The Grey Plover and the Golden Plover are small
compact birds with very large eyes, quite different in
their aspect from the Lapwing. They are found all
over India in the cold season and wander a great
164 THE PLOVERS.
deal, so one might fall in with a flock on the Flats,
or about Worlee or Colaba ; but it is not likely. The
Ring Plovers, or Sand Plovers, (./Egialitis) have
more right to a place in our list, for they are regular
shore birds, loving sandy beaches, and they swarm
all along the coast in the cold season. On the Espla-
nade you will meet them in scores, especially in the
morning. I dare say they generally pass for
"snippets," but comprehensive as that genus is, it
cannot be stretched to take in the Ring Plovers.
They are true Plovers, three-toed and swift running,
with broad heads, large eyes and stout bills. They
live in small parties, running nimbly before you on
the sands, or getting up and flying ahead with a swift
and sinuous flight, not far above the ground. There
are several species of them, which it would be useless
to describe separately here. They are all small,
sandy-coloured birds, with a dusky collar from which
they get their common name. The one which
frequents our Esplanade is the Indian Ring Plover
(./Egialitis phillipensis).
In December last year (1899), when the famine
inland drove many strange birds to Bombay for a
living, a flock of forty or fifty large Plovers appeared
on the Esplanade and remained for some weeks.
They attracted much attention and were productive
of letters in the newspapers. These belonged to the
species which Jerdon calls the Black-sided Lapwing
(Chettusia gregaria). It is a greyish brown bird,
with wings and tail partly white and partly black. It
is said to be common in the Punjab and north-west.
One bird of the Plover connection remains, which,
though rather rare in most parts of India, seems to
THE PLOVERS. 165
like Bombay and is too striking and handsome to
escape notice. I mean the Oyster-catcher, or Sea Pie.
Why it should be called an Oyster-catcher I cannot
guess, for I do not think it feeds on oysters, and
oysters do not need much catching. But the other
name, Sea Pie, is good, and is almost sufficient to
recognise it by. Its breast and under parts, with the
lower back and a broad band on the wings, are pure
white, and all the rest is pure black. It is a large
bird, not so big as a Curlew, but bigger than a Lap-
wing. All the books speak of it as a winter visitant,
and Mr. Blanford says that it breeds in Northern
Europe and on the Caspian, but I have seen a
flock of fifteen or more, not far from Bombay, on the
29th of June, looking very much at home. So there
may be something still to be discovered about their
habits. The name of this bird in science is Hcematopus
ostralegus.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS.
HAVING done with the Plovers we come to the fowl
of the waters,
and I am
much per-
plexed how
to deal with
them. The
monsoon has
sea r c e 1 y
ended when
the saltpans
and still
flooded rice
fields on the
other side of
the harbour
are alive with
long-leg g e d
waders and
web-f o o t e d
swimmers of
many sizes
and shapes.
S n i pe an d
Curlew, Stint and Sandpiper, Heron and Cormorant,
Duck and Teal, seem to have arrived by one train,
and having no home to go to, are wandering
Snipe and Snippet (i. e., Common Sandpiper).
THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS. 167
about in search of refreshments. Strange birds
are in that crowd sometimes. Not far from Hog
Island I have seen a Flamingo in the same field, I
think, in which I shot a Merganser another year.
Are all these to be reckoned as birds of Bombay?
Five or ten miles are nothing to them, and there is
not one of them of which it can safely be said that
it will not be found on our island. But to describe
half of them would defeat the very purpose of these
papers, which is not to perplex, but to help the seden-
tary Bombayite, who is not a naturalist nor a sports-
man, nor a murderer under any name, so that he may
recognise the birds that he sees as he takes his morn-
ing walk, drives to office, sits in his garden, or enjoys
a sail in the harbour. The best way perhaps to accom-
plish this in the case of the waterfowl will be to notice
chiefly the family features by which one may know to
which clan to refer any fowl he may see, and only
to describe separately those species which are likely to
attract attention, either by their commonness or on
some other account.
Snipe are shot on the Flats every year, but these
papers are not for shooters, and the chief peculiarity
of the Snipe is that it is rarely seen except by those
who seek its destruction. It feeds in secret, where
grass and rushes grow in soft mud or shallow water,
and does not fly till forced. Then it flies indeed. This
constitutes its value for purposes of " sport. " Those
who are not sportsmen do indeed see it sometimes
under other conditions, when it reclines on a bed of
toast, with its poor beak thrust through its own ribs
and its footless legs pointing at the ceiling. To
recognise it then you need only look at its beak
1 68 THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS.
which is 2^ inches long and perfectly straight. No
other bird of the same size has such a beak. The
Jack Snipe is a much smaller bird, and its beak is
only i y2 inches long, but Jacks are not often seen on
Bombay tables.
The word " Snippet" is not in the dictionary, but
it is a word of very common use in India and may be
defined as including any bird which purports to be a
Snipe and is not a Snipe. There are many such, and
since they are much easier to shoot than a real Snipe,
they find their way more readily to the market and to
the tables of those who buy their game. The butler
calls them " Ishnap " and he gives the same name to
Snipe, for he ignores the distinction. But, as I have
already said, you may know them by their beaks ; and
you may know them by their flavour too, for beak and
flavour are cause and effect in this case. The long
beak of the Snipe is soft and sensitive at the point,
being a peculiar instrument, wherewith the fastidious
bird, probing the spongy mud, feels and draws out
the tasty worm. Thus it grows fat and very savoury.
The Snippet's bill is a pair of forceps merely, with
which it picks up any vulgar fare that offers, small
crab, or snail, or water-flea ; and they impart to it
their flavours mingled. Not that Snippets are to be
despised. Some of them are very good eating. But
they are not Snipe.
The majority of Snippets are either Sandpipers,
Greenshanks, or Redshanks. There are three kinds
of Sandpipers, of which the smallest is the common-
est. Jerdon says it is the least common, but he knew
little of this coast. Actitis hypoleucus, the Common
Sandpiper, is a very familiar bird here, found beside
THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS. 169
all waters and not to be mistaken for any other when
once you know it. It seems to fancy itself a Wagtail,
and since nature has not given it a tail worth wagging,
it wags its whole hinder end, constantly and vigorous-
ly, tripping merrily about in its own company, for you
never see a flock of Sandpipers. When it is frighten-
ed it skims away, just over the surface of the water,
holding its wings bent like a bow. It is of a greyish
brown colour above, but white on the under parts.
On each quill feather there is a round white spot,
and when the wing is spread in flight these spots
arrange themselves into a white band. Of all our
cold season birds the Sandpiper is the first to arrive.
I have seen it in July.
The Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis glareola) is quite
a distinct bird from the last, not only larger and
much darker, but different in its character. I would
put it in a different genus if I had the disposal of
these matters. It is also solitary, but is seldom found
at the seaside, or near any open water. It seeks small
ponds and ditches in secluded places. When disturb-
ed it rises into the air and flies clean away, with a
shrill note of alarm. It is of a dark, smoky colour
on all the upper parts, except the lower back and tail,
which are white, with narrow black bars on the tail.
The under parts are white, streaked on the neck and
breast with dusky brown. The third species, which
Jerdon calls the Green Sandpiper and says is the
commonest of all, does not appear to be so fond of
the sea coast as the others and is not a striking bird
in any way, so I need not describe it.
The Greenshanks and Redshanks are very like
Sandpipers, but larger. They differ from each other,
22
1 70 THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS.
as their names indicate, by the colour of their legs.
There are two of each, a greater and a lesser, and I
do not think I can give any directions by which an
amateur will be able to distinguish these four birds
from each other. I cannot always do it myself. The
greater Greenshanks may be known by its size and
the greater Redshanks by the amount of white on its
back and tail and wings, and these are the commonest.
Jerdon says that the name of the greater Greenshanks
in Hindustanee is Timtimna — from its call. In
these parts all the species are known as Timla for the
same reason. The wild, ringing, cheery note of the
Timla is one of those sounds which lay hold of the
memory and in after years call back the scenes in
which you first heard them. It must be a familiar
sound to those who go snipe-shooting across the
harbour, for both the Greenshanks and the Redshanks
are very common among the saltpans and rice-fields.
The greater Greenshanks is really a fine bird for the
table, being almost as good as a Snipe and much
larger. There is not much left in Bombay to attract
birds of this sort, but they may be found in what still
remains of the ancient " Flats." They are cold
season visitors, of course, coming in September and
leaving about April.
The Curlew is common on the whole coast, and
when the tide has run far out and bared the black
rocks round Colaba and Breach Candy, its wild and
plaintive scream often comes in on the breeze. It is
not a " Snippet, " being much too large, but it
deserves a place not far from the Snipe by reason of
its bill, which is five or six inches in length ; not
straight, however, but much curved. This also is a
THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS. 17!
special instrument, and its use is to draw small
crabs, or shell fish, from their burrows in soft sand.
When the tide is far out Curlews may be seen, on
sandy spits or beaches, intent on this interesting
occupation, walking much faster than the paddy
birds with which they are often associated. They are
well worth shooting, for the Curlew is usually very
good eating, though occasionally rank. And it is
almost the biggest wildfowl we get in these parts.
But the Curlew is a wary bird and not at all willing
to be shot at. When one falls, however, the neigh-
bours gather and fly round it, screaming and wanting
to know what is the matter, and you may get two or
three more before they fly away. It is a cruel
advantage to take of their kind-heartedness, but sport
makes men cruel, whatever sportsmen may say to the
contrary. Experto crede. At a distance the Curlew is
a dingy brown bird with a little white on the back, but
at close quarters it shows the game pattern so usual
among these birds, each feather being dark-centred
and light-edged. The Whimbrel, or Lesser Curlew,
is just a smaller edition of its big brother, its bill being
three inches in length, or a little more. It is even
better on the table than the Curlew. Both birds
arrive very early, before August is far on, and im-
mediately after their arrival, while they are still
strangers, many Whimbrels are netted forthe Bombay
market.
Another waterfowl which is sure to catch the eye,
if it should chance to visit Bombay, is the Avocet, a
beautiful white bird with black pointed wings and
a little black on the head and shoulders. Its long,
delicate bill is curved upwards, and I do not know
1^2 THE SNIPES AND SNIPPETS.
how the bird uses it. The Avocet is common enough
at times on the mainland. Then there is the Stilt,
easily known by the ridiculous length of its bright
red legs, which trail behind it when it flies. Its cap,
wings and back are black ; the rest of it is white.
Both these are good eating. The Spoonbill and the
Ibis are striking birds, but very unlikely to be seen
in Bombay. There is only one other bird I need
mention here, and that is the Stint (Tringa minuta),
tiniest of water-fowl. If you see a hundred dingy
little birds, about the size of sparrows, all feeding
together knee-deep in water, you may safely put them
down as Stints.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE WATERHENS.
IF you see a bird like a long-legged chicken, with
its tail stuck
up and its
head nod-
ding at every
stride, and it
skulks away
and d i s-
appears i n
a hedge, or
among the
grass and
rushes on the
margin of a
pond, then
that is a
Waterhen.
There are
many kinds
in India,
including
the British
M oorhen ,
and several of them are likely enough to be found
in Bombay, but they are great skulkers and do
not willingly give you a good view. There is
White-breasted Waterhen.
174 THE WATERHENS.
one, however, which is very easily recognised,
and I know that it is resident among us, because
1 have found its nest in Girgaum, not far from
the Grant Road station, where there is, or used
to be, some marshy land devoted to the cultivation
of rice. The bird I mean is the White-breasted Water-
hen (Galltnula phcsnicura) — a blackish bird, with a
pure white face, throat and breast. The under parts
are chestnut, especially towards the tail, and as it is
generally walking hastily away from you, with its tail
cocked up, this is important. The contrast of these
colours catches the eye and is not easily forgotten.
And if the aspect of the White-breasted Waterhen
catches the eye, its voice does more than catch the ear.
The clamour which this little bird can raise is some-
thing astounding. During the dry season it is silent
enough, but as soon as the rain begins it gets
boisterous, and roars and hiccups and cackles as if it
were some great wild beast and not a small fowl.
The precise import of the uproar I have never been
able to make out, but it must be either a serenade or
a family quarrel, for the monsoon is the season when
the Waterhen aspires to have a family. It lives by
preference among flooded rice fields, bordered by
high hedges overrun with rank creepers, among which
it clambers like a cat with its great spreading feet.
And in the thickest part of some such hedge it makes
its clumsy nest and lays four or five beautiful eggs,
of a light buff colour, spotted with reddish brown
and pale blue. In default of any situation of this
kind, the nest I found in Bombay had been built in
the top of a date palm. The young of Waterhens
run as soon as they are hatched, so the parents had
THE WATERHENS. 175
to get their offspring down somehow from this perilous
height. I was unfortunately absent when the feat
was accomplished, but a malee assured me that he saw
the old birds bringing the young ones down in their
beaks. The White-breasted Waterhen, like the rest
of its tribe, trusts more to its legs than its wings, but
it will fly sometimes for a short distance, its legs
hanging down like tasselled cords.
Among other species of Waterhens I think the
Pigmy Rail (Porzana pygmaed) is the one most like-
ly to be met with in Bombay. It is a dainty little bird
about the size of a Quail, though very different in
shape. The upper parts are olive brown, spotted
with white and black, while the breast, throat and
underparts are bluish grey. The bill is green. I
believe I have seen this bird in one of the cages of a
strolling bird-seller, but that was many years ago.
The Coot must come in here, as I am following
Jerdon, though for the purposes of these papers I
would rather leave it till we come to the wild ducks,
with which it is much more likely to be confounded.
Many a Coot is not only shot, but eaten, for a duck
by sportsmen of the class that shoot Snippets for
Snipe. It is not a Duck, however. Its bill is not the
flat bill of a Duck and, ergo, its diet is not the same,
nor its flavour ; nor are its feet webbed like a Duck's,
but each separate toe is furnished with a curious fringe
of webbing. It is, in fact, a Waterhen which, being
specially equipped for swimming, does not live about
water but in it. Its favourite haunts are large tanks,
or sheets of water, with reedy and weedy margins.
Swimming about among these it looks very like a
Duck and at a distance may be mistaken by anybody;
176 THE WATERHENS.
but its dumpy figure and very short tail serve to distin-
guish it even before one gets near enough to make
out its uniform black colour and conspicuous white
bill. The presence of Coots on any water is said to
encourage and attract Ducks, and the two are often
found in company ; but when a gunner gets among
them the Ducks are soon gone, while the Coots
remain. When they do take wing they rise with
difficulty, beating the water with their wings and
feet. Then they fly slowly round and soon settle
again. For this reason they are very satisfactory
game to a " sportsman " who finds that he has no
luck with Ducks. I have not seen a Coot in Bombay,
except in the guise of a present of game, but it is very
common everywhere in the neighbourhood.
Near to the Waterhens Jerdon.puts the Jacanas.
Blanford relegates them to a different Order, and he may
be right ; but we are not concerned with their " true
inwardness" here. Outwardly they are Waterhens
which neither haunt the borderland of rushes, like the
Rail, nor swim out into the deep, like the Coot, but
walk upon the water. Their toes are so long that,
wherever the weeds and water-lilies are at all thick,
they can travel with as much ease as a Laplander on
his snow shoes. The paradise of the Jacana is one of
those ancient tanks, choked with crimson and white-
flowered lotus, which are at once the wealth and the
glory of an Indian village ; where the women fill their
waterpots and wash their clothes, and the men bathe
and the buffaloes wallow and everybody is happy ;
where no thought of microbe and bacillus blows
across the placid calm of life, and the Pasteur-Mallie
filter is unknown. We are rapidly infecting the
THE WATERHENS. 177
people with our own esteem for ugly utilities, and the
rusty water-tap is dispossessing the picturesque tank ;
but there are many left yet in the suburbs of Bombay,
though the villages which they once vitalised may
have disappeared. And there is one left in our very
midst, the Gowalia tank. In such places, if you look
for it, you may perhaps see the Jacana gingerly tread-
ing the floating leaves. There are two species, the
Bronze-winged (Parra indica) and the Pheasant-
tailed (Hydrophasiamts chirurgus}. The latter is
a bird never to be forgotten if seen in its wed-
ding dress. Its head, face and throat are then
white, the back of its neck golden yellow, its body
mostly dark chestnut brown, and its wings black
and white. Its tail is black and shaped like the tail
of a domestic cock or a pheasant, the middle feathers
being ten inches long. In the cold season it drops
this ornament and assumes a plainer plumage, brown
above and white beneath. A black line from the
corner of the mouth runs down each side of the neck
and forms a broad gorget on the breast. The nest of
the Jacana is a floating heap of weeds among the
rushes and lilies that it loves. The eggs are always
four, those of the Bronze-winged being buff, or olive,
crossed all over with a maze of black lines, while
those of the Pheasant-tailed are of a uniform, glossy,
bronze-brown colour.
The Purple Coot and Water Cock, though familiar
enough to sportsmen everywhere, can scarcely claim
a place here.
23
CHAPTER XXX.
THE HERONS.
THERE is a good deal of confusion in the popu-
lar mind
about
H erons ,
Storks and
Cranes,
which are
really very
different
tribes o f
b i r d s ,
though
they all
have long
necks and
legs and
are mostly
of large
size and
are all
more o r
less given
to spend-
ing their
time near
Pond Herons.
water.
Cranes feed chiefly on grain. They make their nests
on the ground and the young get on their own legs
•
THE HERONS. 179
almost as soon as they are hatched, like chickens. In
this respect they resemble Plovers and all the water-
fowl which we have been considering hitherto.
Storks and Herons, on the other hand, build their nests
on trees, and the young are at first naked and helpless,
like young crows or sparrows. To my mind this is
a very important difference, entailing greater parental
responsibility and implying higher intelligence.
In modern systems these birds are rightly classed
in a different order from the Cranes, and though Jerdon
put them in the same order, he separated them by a
wide interval. The difference between Storks and
Herons is not so great nor so easily explained. The
Storks are heavier birds, with large and clumsy bills ;
but the most obvious outward sign by which they
may be known from one another is this, that when
a Stork flies, it holds its neck out straight and stiff,
and looks like a man carrying his hat on the point
of his walking stick ; while the Heron doubles back
its more flexible neck and rests its head between
its shoulders.
The great Sarus, the Common Crane and the
beautiful and savoury Demoiselle, or Kullum of
sportsmen, are very familiar birds in Guzerat and the
north of India ; but I have never seen them, or heard
of their occurrence, on this coast, except during last
cold season, when the famine in Guzerat forced them to
wander in search of water. Of Storks there are
several species which may be met with up the creeks,
and the well-known Adjutant, the Goliath of the
whole Stork tribe, consorts with the Vultures at the
Towers of Silence, as I learned recently from the
veracious sketches of a well-known " special artist "
l8o THE HERONS.
sent out by one of the illustrated papers. We
all know that the British public demands palm
trees in an oriental scene and perhaps it demands
Adjutants too. But that special artist is an honorable
man — they are all honourable men. Somehow it
happens that I have never seen that Adjutant at the
Towers of Silence, nor any other Stork in Bombay.
Of Herons, however, we have no lack. The common-
est is the Pond Heron, or Blind Heron, or Paddy
Bird (Ardeola leucoptera), which despises not the most
paltry tank or pool that will hold a frog. Even the
native Christians of Salsette do not esteem this a very
dainty bird for the table, so it is little persecuted and
grows very familiar, allowing you to approach within
a few paces before it suddenly produces a pair of
snowy wings from its pockets and flaps away. Till
it unfolded those wings it was a yellowish-grey bird,
darker on the back and streaky about the neck and
breast. During the breeding season, that is in the
rains, its back and shoulders are clothed with a mantle
of rich maroon, and a crest of long, pointed, white
feathers adorns its head. It is then a handsome bird,
though its snakey, yellow eyes spoil its expression.
Its legs are green and its beak greenish yellow, black-
ened at the tip as if burnt. Like all Herons, it has
a great deal of feather and little solid .body. The
length of its serpentine neck is quite disguised by the
long plumes that hang down in front and behind.
The small frogs and fishes and even the cautious
crabs have little suspicion of the length of its reach.
To watch for these, standing ankle-deep in dirty
water, is its sole occupation, and that long, hard,
sharp beak is a perfect pair of forceps for plucking them
THE HERONS. l8l
out of their element. Then they go down "the red
lane" without further ceremony, for the throat of the
Heron, slender as it looks, is wonderfully elastic.
Almost all the Herons make their nests in company
in some large tree. The Pond Herons of Back Bay
have appropriated a large tamarind tree in Marine
Lines, on the top-most twigs of which, from the
month of May onwards, you will find a whole village.
The nests are like those of crows, but not so well
built.. The eggs, four or five in number, are of a
greenish blue colour. At nesting time the Pond
Heron is rather noisy. Its voice is a short croak, or
cough, not the least musical.
Next come the White Herons, or Egrets, pure
white birds, more graceful in every way than the
podgy Pond Heron. There are three species, which
differ from one another only in size. The largest is
about the size of the English Heron, but pure white
all over. It is not very common here, nor is the next,
which is a size smaller. The third, which Jerdon
calls The Little Egret (Herodias garzetta), is very
plentiful and would be more so if Goanese gunners
did not persecute it for its flesh and its feathers. The
feathers are exported to Europe in large quantities for
the decoration of women's hats, or some such shame-
ful purpose. The Little Egret is somewhat larger
than the Pond Heron and much taller. During the
breeding season it is adorned with long, flowing
plumes on the back and breast, and two thin, hair-
like feathers droop from the back of its head. Wher-
ever there is shallow water, or flooded ground, this
species may be seen in companies wading for little
frogs and fishes. I once saw one trying to swallow a
1 82 THE HERONS.
snake. They build like the Pond Heron and often in
its company.
About the same size as the Little Egret, but of a
slatey-grey colour, is the Ashy Egret (Demiegretta
asha). It is common enough, but haunts the sea-
shore rather than fresh waters, and is well named by
Dr. Blanford the " Reef Heron."
There is yet another species, which is very easily
mistaken for the Little Egret, being white like it and
about the same size ; but it belongs to a lower caste
and its habits are not quite respectable, on which
account Mahomedans will not eat it. It lives princi-
pally on insects and follows cattle diligently when
they are grazing, for the sake of the grasshoppers
stirred by their feet, and also for the chance of useful-
ness in relieving the poor beasts of various small tor-
mentors. The cattle appreciate the kindness and
repay it by giving the birds the freedom of their backs.
Sometimes you will see a meek buffalo chewing the
cud, while a " Cattle Egret" stands on its head and
performs surgical operations on its ears. The name of
this species in Jerdon is Buphus coromandus. During
the monsoon its whole neck is clothed with plumes of
a rich orange buff colour, and you may easily distin-
guish it. In the cold season it is all white, but even
then you may always recognise it, if you get near
enough, by its yellow bill. The bill of the Little Egret
is black. It nests in company with Pond Herons and
other Egrets, laying paler eggs. The common native
name for all these birds is Bugla, but the Cattle Egret
is sometimes distinguished as Gai-bugla.
The European, or Blue, Heron, which our fore-
fathers delighted to hawk, is not uncommon in all the
THE HERONS* 183
creeks and rivers of this coast, and if it is not often
seen in Bombay, the reason is that it is afraid to show
itself where its great enemy, man, is in such force.
Even in quiet country places it learns to be very wary,
for there is scarcely any waterfowl which is more
sought after by native shikarees. The mouths of
my Mussulman lascars water when they see one and
many a time have I been urged to shoot that grand
" shikar." Yet they will not eat Pond Herons at
all, and are suspicious of even the White Egrets
on account of the disreputable character of the Cattle
Egret. The Blue Heron (Ardea cinered) is a less
sociable bird than the Egrets and does not generally
go in flocks, but both at home and here they form
"heronries" at nesting time.
One of the handsomest of the whole family is the
Night Heron (Nycticorax griseus], but I need scarce-
ly describe it here, because the chance of its being
seen is small. It may be heard everywhere, uttering
its loud wak as it flies overhead after darkness has set
in. Strange to say, it keeps most promiscuous com-
*pany at nesting time, consorting not only with other
Herons but with Cormorants. As these feed in the
day and it never goes abroad till night, they must be
an unmitigated nuisance to each other, which may
explain the incessant bad language that goes on at
one of these nesting trees. I know a giant tree not
ten miles from Bombay in which there is scarcely a
space to spare in which a nest could stick. The ground
underneath is strewn with eggshells and other less
savoury fragments.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND GREBES.
WE have arrived at the last Order of birds, the
Natatores, or Swimmers, whose home is on the face
of the waters. Some of them cannot walk at all, and
few are at ease on dry land, but in their own element
t! r .-.' "I,.- ' k' "'
Dab chicks.
they are happy and graceful. Their bodies are long
and boat-shaped, their plumage close-set and well
oiled, so that any fluid rolls off them " like water off
a duck's back," their legs are short and set far back,
and their feet are converted into paddles by a web
which stretches from toe to toe. With these pro-
pellers they make their way swiftly over the surface of
THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND GREBES. 185
the water and most of them dive well. Some feed on
fishes and some on water-weeds, or insects, or snails.
Their habits in this respect have a practical interest
for us, because we feed on them and their taste in one
sense depends on their taste in another.
The domestic duck is the type of the Natatores.
In a wild state the same bird is known to sportsmen
as the Mallard, which is abundant in Sind and the
Punjab, but rarely strays so far south as this. There
are several species of wild Ducks, however, which
visit us regularly, such as the Pintail, the Gadwall,
the Common and Garganey Teals, and the Shoveller.
The last is a coarse feeder and its flavour is variable,
but the other four are among the most tasty of the
whole tribe. They are all migratory birds, spending
the summer in Central Asia, or Europe, or even the
Arctic Regions. They arrive here in September or
October, and at first wander about in an aimless way,
settling on any water that seems to offer a chance of a
meal. Large flocks may be seen crossing our har-
bour in different directions, and of course they will
settle at times on the inundated parts of the Flats.
This is the native shikaree's opportunity. His idea of
sport is to bag a maximum of meat with a minimum
expenditure of powder and shot. So he gets up
before dawn, and, having marked a flock, wriggles
like a mudfish, under cover of a ridge of earth, or a
tuft of grass, till he gets within range, then sends a
heavy charge of large shot into the thick of them. I
have known of fourteen Ducks being bagged in this
way by a single shot. The wild Duck is no fool,
and a few sharp lessons of this kind soon teach the
survivors wisdom, which is the reason that there is
24
1 86 THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND GREBES.
so little duck-shooting to be had in the vicinity of
Bombay. The ducks are here, and they feed wher-
ever there is food, but they get away before day-light
and sleep on the open sea. All through the cold
season you may hear the sound of wings at night, as
a flock passes overhead, in places where you will look
for them in vain by day.
I need not try to describe the different species of wild
Ducks, for a man who does not shoot will not easily
learn to distinguish one from another, but he may know
enough not to confound them with the Coot, which
has already been described, or with the Cormorant.
The little Cormorant (Graculus javanicus in Jerdon)
is a very common bird on this coast, especially up
the creeks, and I daresay it often passes for a sort
of black Duck, but it differs from a Duck as a gentle-
man differs from a loafer. The Cormorant is a
thoroughly shabby bird, with a large, ragged tail, and
coloured all over a sordid black, like the Sunday coat
of a Goanese cook. At least, this is its aspect at a
distance. In its habits also it is unlike a Duck. It
seldom rests on the water, but perches on rocks, or
even on trees, sitting very upright. It flies well, but
generally at no great height and slowly, compared
with a wild Duck ; not in orderly flocks either, but sing-
ly, or in small, loose parties. Its beak is not flat, but
narrow and a little hooked at the tip, the use of it
being to catch and hold a slippery fish, for the Cormo-
rant is a fisher by trade. The Chinese tame them and
employ them as divers, fitting a ring on their neck to
prevent them swallowing what they catch, which
seems mean. The Hindoo fisherman is not so ingeni-
ous as the Chinaman and has not discovered this use
THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND GREBES. 1 87
of the Cormorant. Jerdon states that these birds have
the power of inflating the gullet to enable them "to
swallow considerable sized fish," and their digestion
is "very rapid," to which may be added that they
have a healthy appetite. I imagine that, when the
Government takes the Indian fisheries in hand, as it
has done those at home, it will be found expedient to
exterminate the Cormorants. I hope that day is far
distant, however. A crowd of Cormorants after a
great shoal of little fishes affords a most exciting
spectacle. They hem the shoal in and drive it
towards the shore, diving and coming up and diving
again in breathless haste. All the white Egrets in the
neighbourhood come down to share in the fun and run
along the edge of the water, plucking out any shiver-
ing refugee that comes within reach. So there is
black death behind and pale death in front, and the
massacre must be terrible.
There are two other species of Cormorants, the Large
and the Lesser, as Jerdon calls them, but they are not
nearly so common. The Snake Bird (Plotus melano-
gaster), so called from its serpentine head and neck, is
more familiar. At a distance, sitting on a low tree,
with its wings held out to dry, it looks like a big Cor-
morant with the neck of a Heron fitted on to its shoul-
ders ; but at close quarters it is a very handsome bird.
Its plumage is peculiar, the feathers on the shoulders
especially being long and narrow, like the hackles of
a cock. Each feather is black or dark brown, with a
silvery border, or spotted with silvery white, and the
effect is very beautiful. When the snake-bird is
swimming it often lets the whole of its body sink un-
der the surface, so that nothing is visible except the
188 THE DUCKS, CORMORANTS AND GREBES.
head and neck. At such time it looks like a sea-snake
coming up to breathe All these birds breed on trees
and lay greenish-white eggs during the rainy season.
The snake-bird generally chooses a small tree growing
out of water and is not gregarious, but the little
Cormorants form great societies and resort to the
biggest trees they can find. As I have said already,
they do not object to the company of Herons.
One little bird remains to be described which is
more thoroughly aquatic than any that I have yet
mentioned. The Dabchick, or Little Grebe (Podiceps
philippensis), can just stand up and toddle a few steps
on land, and though it evidently can fly much better
than any one would infer from its puny wings, and
makes its way over long distances from one tank to
another, it never thinks of taking to flight when shot
at or disturbed. It dives, leaving scarcely a ripple,
and does not appear again for a very long time.
Under water it swims with great facility, for the
paddles which take the place of legs in its anatomy
are so placed that they do not work only under its
body, like the legs of a Duck, but sideways, or even
upwards. It lives chiefly, I think, on little fishes and
shrimps, which it pursues and catches under water.
The Dabchick is on almost every tank in India, and
I have even seen it in a well. I do not know how to
describe it better than to say that you might take it
for a small chicken without a tail. Its colour is dark,
glossy brown on the upper parts, with some rich
chestnut on the sides of the neck. Young birds are
lighter. The nest of the Dabchick is a massive island
of weeds collected by itself. In a little hollow on the
top of this it lays four or five white eggs. They do
CORMORANTS AND GREBES. 189
not remain white very long, for the cautious little bird
never leaves them without covering them with wet
weeds, to conceal them from hostile eyes, and their
chalky texture gets so stained that before they are
hatched they have usually acquired a rich brown, or
bronze, hue. As soon as the little ones come out they
take to the water and swim after their mother, or sit
upon her back when they want a rest. The breeding
season is of course the rains, when the tanks are full.
At that time the Dabchicks get noisy, constantly
uttering a shrill, querulous cry.
I ought to mention that Grebes are not classed
with Ducks in any modern system, and are in truth
very different. Their feet are not webbed in the same
way, but each toe has its own web and forms a
separate oval paddle.
CHAPTER XXXII.
tv
THE GULLS AND TERNS.
WITH the Gulls and Terns these papers close.
J e r d o n ' s
book ends
with the
C o r m o-
rants, the
Gulls com-
ing bet-
ween them
and the
Ducks;
but I de-
scribed the
Cormo-
rants i n
my last
paper,
along
with the
Ducks,
because
they pre-
sent them-
selves t o
us in simi-
lar situa-
tions and are in many respects alike in their habits,
while the Gulls form a distinct group which is in no
/I
Gull and Terns.
THE GULLS AND TERNS.
danger of being confounded with any other. They are
web-footed birds, whose home is on the waters, but
not in the mild sense in which you may say the same
of a Duck. For the wings of a Gull are more than
its feet, and the winds are its element as much
as the waves. Some kinds follow the larger rivers
inland, and even visit lakes and large tanks, but
most prefer the sea coast and the restless waves
with which their own wild spirits are in sym-
pathy. They often rest on reefs, or sandbanks, or
fishing posts, or floating spars, and they are persuad-
ed that the buoys in the harbour have been provided
only for their convenience : but failing such solid
resting-places they will take their seat on a dancing
wave, with an easy grace which is all their own, and
eye the passing boat with a happy and triumphant
smile. They feed entirely on the wing, roaming up
and down the coast, visiting all harbours and follow-
ing ships at sea. Watching the flight of Gulls is one
of the many delights of a sea voyage to me. For
hours together they will keep their place about the
stern of a fast steamer, as if it drew them on without
effort on their part. They rise or sink, fall back a
little or forge ahead, or pass [from one side to the
other, as if there were some hidden motive po\ver at
work within them. Outwardly there is nothing to be
seen but a few lazy flaps now and then of their snowy
wings. A plateful of scraps goes over-board, and in
an instant they are a screaming and scrambling crowd,
growing smaller and dimmer till they pass out of
sight altogether as the swift ship goes on her way.
But in a quarter of an hour, lo ! they are about us
again as if they had never been absent.
THE GULLS AND TERNS.
There is a fashion in dress among birds as among
their betters, and with Gulls and Terns the fashion is
to wear a grey cloak, or mantle, over a suit of imma-
culate white. There are a few eccentric species, but
as a rule almost the only difference between one and
another is in the tint of the mantle. One will be a
pale, French grey, while another is dark slaty. The
tips of the wings and the end of the tail may be black,
and in summer the correct thing is a sable cap, or a
silky black topknot. Add to this that the young birds
differ considerably in these same points from those
that are advanced in age, and you will see that it is
no easy matter for a man who has not made a special
study of the subject to distinguish the different species
of Gulls that may be seen about the Bombay harbour.
He certainly will not do it with the aid of any descrip-
tion that I can give. But any one may learn the
difference between a Gull and a Tern. Terns are
smaller birds, with much longer and more pointed
wings and deeply forked tails. These differences are
accounted trivial by the anatomist, but they have the
advantage of being obvious to the unlearned ; and, as
far as my own observation goes, they indicate a differ-
ence which ought not to be overlooked between the
habits of the two groups of birds. Terns are fishers,
which catch their slippery prey by dropping head-
foremost into the water, often disappearing entirely
for a second or two. When the bird emerges it is
holding a wriggling little fish cross-wise in its sharp
beak, in which position the fish cannot possibly go
down its throat ; so, giving a pretty little shrug of its
shoulders to shake off the water, it rises ten or twenty
feet-and then tosses the fish into the air and catches
THE GULLS AND TERNS. 193
it again by the head. This manoeuvre is followed by
the magical disappearance of the fish. It is a pretty
sight to watch a flock of Terns following a shoal of
little fishes with clamorous glee, dropping one after
another with a splash and rising again and chasing
each other, as if they had a stock of breath like the
widow's cruse of oil. Now all this is impossible to a
Gull. It is a tramp, following ships for the offal and
scraps that may be thrown overboard, picking up
dead and sickly fishes, helping itself, in short, to
anything that floats, but never dipping below the
surface of the water. This is the difference between
a Gull and a Tern, and to me it seems of more conse-
quence than the number of feathers in the tail, or the
bristles about the nose.
The commonest Gull on our coast is, I think, the
Brown-headed Gull (Larus brunneicephalus), but it is
not easily distinguished on the wing from the Laugh-
ing Gull (L. ridibundus), which is also plentiful.
Both birds are pearl-grey on the mantle and pure
white on the head, neck, body and tail. Before they
leave us in the hot season (for they breed in Europe
or Central Asia) their heads become dark brown or
sepia. Their bills and feet are red. In young or
youngish birds the tail is edged with black. The
points of the wings are always black, with a broad
white band across them, and the principal difference
between the Brown-headed and the Laughing Gulls
is in the shape of this white band. Another common
species is the Herring Gull (Larus affinis — L. fuscus
in Jerdon), a larger bird, with a slate-coloured mantle.
Its bill and feet are yellow, and it does not put on a
brown cap in winter. Young birds are brown, and
25
194 THE GULLS AND TERNS.
though they change as they grow older, it is about
three years before they acquire the pure grey and
white plumage ; so tjiere may be a good deal of
variety in the colour of a flock. The Herring Gull
breeds in Siberia.
Occasionally you will see a gigantic Gull sitting
solitary on a buoy. If the hot season is approaching,
its whole head and upper neck will be black, but in
the cold season it will be pure white all over, save for
the pale grey mantle and a little black on the tips of
the wings. If it is a youth, it will be more or less
brown or mottled. This is the Great Black-headed
Gull (Larus ichthycetus), which breeds in Siberia but
roams all over India in the cold season. One other
species may be mentioned, which attracts attention at
once by its unusual colour. The body and tail are
white, but the mantle is dark brown, and the head,
neck and breast are more or less brown according to
season. This is the Sooty Gull (Larus hempnchi),
which meets us in crowds at Aden on the voyage
home, and is common, I believe, along the coast as
far east as Sind, but only occasionally appears in
Bombay harbour.
Among the Terns one may be distinguished by its
size. This is the Large Sea Tern, as Jerdon calls it.
In the "Avifauna of British India" it is the Large
Crested Tern (Sterna bergii). It is pure white, with a
grey mantle and a silky black crest. The bill is
yellow and the feet black. This large Tern is very
common all along the coast, and has a great fancy
for perching on the tops of fishing stakes. There is
a smaller species which is very like it in colour, but
much paler. Jerdon calls it the Smaller Sea Tern
THE GULLS AND TEPNS. 195
\Sterna media). Then there is the Gull-gilled Tern
(Sterna anglica), which has a black bill, and the
White-cheeked Tern (S. albigena), and the Roseate
Tern (S. dougallt), which is not mentioned in Jerdon
at all. These all, and some others, visit this coast in
large numbers during the cold season, and even
during the height of the monsoon they are seldom
altogether absent. The Roseate Terns breed on the
Vingorla Rocks during the monsoon, when they are
inaccessible to every enemy except man and almost
so to him. Among the rank grass which covers the
tops of the islands the birds lay their eggs, jostling
each other for room and killing each other's young1
and behaving like the wild savages that they are.
Other species breed on islands in the Persian Gulf, or
along the Mekran coast, but I do not think any of
them migrate to such distant regions as the Gulls do.
There are several ocean birds more or less nearly
related to the Gulls and Terns which roam over the
Arabian Sea and between Bombay and Aden, such as
the Booby and the Shearwater and the Frigate Bird
and the beautiful Tropic Bird. At times, in violent
storms, these may be wrecked on our shores, but they
do not belong to the Common Birds of Bombay.
•._.
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