, 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 \\. 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^ ^ 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-