Part 11

They appear to be the favourite game bird of the native of the Punjab. They are quite good to eat. A charge of small shot fired into a tree full of them brings down a dozen or more, so that a “crack” shot is easily able to secure a large bag and brag about it to his friends!

Several other species of starling visit the plains of the Punjab during the winter, arriving in November. These, like the familiar English starling, are all dressed in black, glossed with blue, green, and purple, and spotted with white. The species-making propensity of the professional ornithologist has led to the division of these into a number of species, although it requires an expert with an ornithological imagination to distinguish them from one another. They go about in flocks and, like the rosy starlings, all “talk at once.”

The winter visitors that appeal most to the sportsman are the game birds—the grey quail, the various species of duck, teal, geese, and snipe. The quail (_Coturnix communis_) are the first to appear. They arrive in Lahore late in August or early in September. It is the moon rather than the temperature that determines the date of their arrival. They migrate at night-time and naturally like to travel by moonlight. A few grey quail remain with us all the year round. These are probably birds that have been wounded by _shikaris_ and have not in consequence sufficient strength for the long migratory flight across the Himalayas. The fact that some quail remain in India throughout the hot weather, and are able to breed successfully, shows that their migration is a luxury rather than a necessity.

It is a universal rule that all migratory birds of the Northern Hemisphere breed in the more northerly of their two homes. This seems to indicate that they were formerly permanent residents in the latter. Geology tells us that thousands of years ago the climate of this earth suddenly became colder. The result was that the more northerly portions of it were rendered uninhabitable for birds during the winter—the frost killed insect life and the snow made vegetable food difficult to procure; hence, the birdfolk were confronted with the alternative of starving in winter or going south in search of food. They chose the latter alternative. So powerful is the “homing instinct”—the instinct that man has developed so wonderfully in the homer pigeon—that these migrants invariably returned in the summer to their old homes for breeding purposes.

The climate has again become milder, so that for many migratory birds migration is no longer necessary; nevertheless, they still perform the double journey every year. The force of habit is strong in birds. Those Australian finches which are imported into India, even when kept in aviaries in the Himalayas, nest in December and January as they did in Australia, where these are summer months.

The ducks and geese that visit the Punjab in winter are too numerous to be dealt with in this brief essay, which of necessity is not exhaustive. It merely deals with such of the winter visitors to the Punjab as are seen every day. Every winter Northern India is invaded by millions of grey-lag and barred-headed geese, and by hundreds of thousands of brahmany ducks, mallard, gadwall, teal, wigeon, pintails, shovellers and pochards. The other game birds which visit the Punjab in great numbers every winter are the jack and the common snipe.

The Indian redstart or firetail (_Ruticilla rufiventris_) is one of the most striking of our winter visitors. No one but a blind man can fail to notice the sprightly little bird with St. Vitus’ dance in its tail. The head, breast, neck, and back of the cock are grey or black according to the season of the year. Birds’ clothes wear out just as ours do. But every bird is his own tailor. When his clothes wear out, instead of resorting to the West-End tailor or the humble _darzi_, he grows a new coat. This process is technically known as the moult and occurs at the end of summer in most birds.

Each of the feathers composing the coat of the cock redstart is black with a grey margin. When the feathers are new only the grey edges show, the bird, therefore, looks grey; gradually the grey borders become worn away, so that the bird turns black. The remainder of the plumage of the cock, except the two middle tail feathers, is brick red. The hen is reddish brown where the cock is black or grey. As the bird hops about in the garden it looks very like a robin, but the moment it takes to its wings it becomes transformed, as if by magic, into a flash of red. The red of the tail and back is scarcely visible when the bird is not flying, for the wings cover the latter and the tail is closed like a fan; the red feathers all folding up underneath the middle brown ones which act as a cover. During flight the red tail feathers open out and the wings leave the red back exposed—hence the sudden transformation.

The redstart should be a favourite with Englishmen, because in habits and appearance it resembles the familiar robin of our country. The perverse Indian robin (_Thamnobia cambayensis_), it will be remembered, insists on wearing its patch of red, as Phil Robinson hath it, on the seat of its trousers.

The Indian redstart arrives towards the end of September. In the autumn of 1906, September 22nd was the date on which I first noticed a redstart in Lahore. In the following autumn I did not see one until September 27th. Bird-lovers of fixed abode in India would be rendering no small service to ornithology if they would record carefully, year after year, the dates on which they first observe each of our returning summer and winter visitors.

When the migrant wagtails arrive we feel that the hot weather is really over. Three species of wagtail are common in Lahore. One of these—the pied wagtail (_Motacilla maderaspatensis_)—is a permanent resident. The other two—the white wagtail (_Motacilla alba_) and the grey wagtail (_M. melanope_)—come to us only for the winter. The last is easily distinguished by its bright yellow lower plumage. The white and the pied wagtails are both clothed in black and white, but whereas the face and throat of the former are white, the whole head of the pied wagtail is black save for a white eye-brow.

Wagtails live almost entirely on the ground. Throughout the winter dozens of them are to be seen on the gymkhana cricket ground, sprinting after tiny insects, and stopping after each capture to indulge in a little tail wagging. All three species of wagtail feed exclusively on insects, so that the migration in this case, as in that of the quail and of many other birds, is obviously due to the force of habit.

Another winter visitor that cannot fail to attract attention is the white-eared bulbul (_Molpastes leucotis_), a bird loathed by the gardener on account of the damage it does to buds.

Two species of bulbul are abundant in Lahore: this one and the Punjab red-vented bulbul (_Molpastes intermedius_). The latter, like the poor, is always with us, while the former shakes the dust of Lahore off its feet and departs when the weather becomes hot. The permanent resident has a red patch under its tail and a black head and crest, while the migrant wears yellow under the tail and has white cheeks.

The family of birds of prey furnishes us with a large number of winter visitors. Those most likely to be seen in the neighbourhood of Lahore are the steppe eagle, the long-legged buzzard, the sparrow hawk, the peregrine falcon, the kestrel, and the merlin. It must not be thought that _all_ our Indian birds of prey are migrants. A number of species remain in the plains throughout the hot weather to vex the souls of their weaker brethren. Curiously enough, there is among the permanently resident raptores a counterpart, a nearly allied species—I might almost say a “double”—of nearly every migrant. The tawny eagle (_Aquila vindhiana_) and the steppe eagle (_A. bifasciata_) are so alike that some authorities are inclined to regard them as a single species. But the former lives in the plains all the year round and breeds in and about Lahore, while the steppe eagle goes to the hills in the hot weather to breed, and appears quite unable to endure heat. The one caught at Wazirabad in the cold weather of 1906-7 and confined in the local “Zoo” died comparatively early in the hot weather, whereas the tawny eagle, kept in the same cage, has all along flourished like the green bay tree. The shikra (_Astur badius_) and the sparrow hawk (_Accipiter nisus_), although ornithologists now place them in different genera, are so much alike that it is easy to mistake one for the other, yet the former is a permanent resident while the latter is a migrant. Similarly the peregrine falcon (_Falco peregrinus_) is a winter visitor to the plains of the Punjab, while its cousin the laggar (_Falco jugger_) is a permanent resident. In the same way the _Turumti_ or red-headed merlin abides with us all the year round, while the common merlin (_Aesalon regulus_) visits us only in winter.

Almost the only raptorial winter visitor that has not a cousin who lives in the plains throughout the year is the kestrel (_Tinnunculus alaudarius_), the bird known in England as the Windhover. This is perhaps the easiest to identify of all the birds of prey, on account of its habit of hovering on vibrating wings, like the pied kingfisher, high in the air, over a spot where it thinks that there is quarry in the shape of some small rodent. If the surmise be correct the kestrel drops like a stone and seizes its quarry in its talons; if it sees nothing it sweeps away with a few easy movements of its powerful wings and hovers elsewhere. The only other bird of prey that hovers like the kestrel is the black-winged kite (_Elanus caerulus_). This is mainly white and so cannot be confounded with the kestrel.

The explanation of the fact that one species of bird of prey leaves the plains in the hot weather, while a nearly related species remains, may perhaps be found in the nature of their food. Birds of prey are to a greater or lesser extent specialists; while quite ready to devour any small bird, reptile, or mammal which comes their way, they lay themselves out more especially to catch one particular species, and if that species migrates it follows that the bird that preys upon it will also migrate. Thus the peregrine falcon lays itself out to catch ducks and naturally goes with them to their breeding grounds, just as the hawker of cheap wares, who preys upon the _mem-sahib_, follows her to the hills in the summer.

In conclusion mention must be made of the _Corvi_ which visit us in winter. The arch-corvus, the grey-necked rascal (_Corvus splendens_), of course, abides with us all the year round. The raven, too, is to be seen at all times of the year, but is more abundant in the cold weather than in the hot. During the summer months we see comparatively few ravens; in the winter they are exceedingly numerous. Every evening towards sunset a long stream of them may be observed flying in a westerly direction to the common roosting place. There is a similar stream of crows that flies in a north-westerly direction. The rook (_Corvus frugilegus_) is a permanent resident of Kashmir and the North-Western Himalayas, but in mid-winter many individuals are driven by the cold into the Frontier Province and the Punjab; some come as far south as Lahore, where they consort with the crows. If the winter is a severe one large numbers of rooks come to Lahore, otherwise these birds are not very numerous. The same applies to the jackdaw (_Corvus monedula_), but he never comes in such numbers as the rook. There is in the octagonal bird house in the Lahore “Zoo” a compartment in which there is a “Happy Family” of ravens, rooks, and jackdaws, with an Australian crow-shrike and a Nicobar pigeon to keep them company. Thus every one who cannot already do so may learn to identify the various _Corvi_ which visit Lahore in the winter.

XXVII A KINGFISHER AND A TERN

Nearly every village in India has its pond which becomes filled with water during the monsoon and grows drier and drier during the winter and hot weather. The pond is usually a natural depression, sometimes enlarged and deepened by human agency. Occasionally a village is situated on the edge of a lake, or _jhil_, but such fortunate villages are few and far between; the average hamlet has to be content with a small tank. This morning I came upon such a tank, in which the water had become low, leaving a wide margin of mud between it and the artificially made bank. At one end a couple of people were squatting. _Mirabile dictu_, there was not a paddy bird to be seen, and the only feathered creature disporting itself along the edge was a grey wagtail. In mid pond four domestic ducks were feeding. A tern—the Indian river tern (_Sterna seena_)—was busy at the tank, flying gracefully over the water and dipping into it every few seconds. Judging from the frequency with which the bird dived, the water must have teemed with food, but there were no signs of fish rising, so that how the eye of the tern was able to penetrate the very muddy water is a mystery. However, the tern did manage to distinguish its quarry, for, although its movements were so rapid that I was not able to discover what it was catching, I could see distinctly that, when rising, it carried something tiny in its bill.

Terns are especially addicted to pieces of water that are rapidly drying up, for under such conditions they find the creatures upon which they prey literally jostling one another. After the water has been run off from a canal, dozens of terns congregate at each hollow in the canal-bed in which water lies.

The tern, when it plunges after its quarry, takes great care not to wet its wings. Its habit is to drop from a height of about twenty feet head foremost. In the course of the plunge the head and body are often submerged, but, I think, never the wings; during the operation, these are held almost vertically. So assiduously was this tern plying his profession that he made thirty dives in about six minutes.

While he was thus employed a pied kingfisher (_Ceryle rudis_) appeared on the scene and took up a position on one of three neem trees that grew beside the tank. After sitting thus for a few seconds, he too began to seek for food. Save that both he and the tern drop from a height of about twenty feet into the water after their quarry, there is but little similarity between their movements. The tern sails gracefully along on pinions which move but slowly, while the kingfisher flies a little way, then remains stationary in the air for a few seconds on rapidly vibrating wings, with both tail and bill pointing downwards, so that the shape of the bird is an inverted V with the apex at the neck. It then either dives or passes on to another spot where it again hovers. Frequently it makes as if it were going to dive, then seems to change its mind, for it checks itself during its drop and passes on.

When the kingfisher was hovering in the air, the tern approached and looked as though he were going to attack him. However, he contented himself by skimming past very close to the “pied fish tiger.” This appeared to disconcert the latter, who went back to the neem tree and rested there for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the tern flew away. The moment he had departed the kingfisher renewed his piscatorial efforts and took up a position about twenty feet above the water almost directly over the spot where the ducks were floating. I thought this rather foolish on the part of the kingfisher, because the ducks must necessarily scare away all the fish from that part of the water. However, the little fisherman possessed more sense than I gave him credit for. He had not been hovering for thirty seconds when he plunged into the water and emerged with a large object in his bill. With this he flew to the muddy border of the pond. Then, by means of my field glasses, I saw that his quarry consisted of a frog about two and a half inches long including the legs. The kingfisher experienced some little difficulty in swallowing the frog. He had it crosswise in his beak and the problem that confronted him was to get the frog lengthwise head foremost in his bill without releasing the nimble little amphibian and thus giving it a chance of escape. After a little manœuvring the kingfisher got the frog in the desired position, and, having held it thus for a few seconds, swallowed it.

Then the kingfisher remained squatting on the bank for a couple of minutes looking pensive. This was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that as regards size the frog bore to him the same relation as a large mackerel does to a man. I was interested to see whether the kingfisher would consider this a sufficient meal, or whether he would immediately resume his fishing operations. I expected him to adopt the latter course, for birds have most voracious appetites. If horses were to eat in the same ratio they would require at least a maund of oats per diem to keep them in health! My surmise was correct. In a few seconds the kingfisher flew to a large stake projecting from the water and squatted there, cocking up his tail at frequent intervals. This motion of the tail is possibly an aid to digestion! When he was thus seated, the tern reappeared on the scene and at once recommenced fishing in the manner already described. After the tern had been fishing for a couple of minutes the kingfisher resumed operations and again sought the neighbourhood of the ducks. He soon captured a second frog; but this time, instead of being able to bear it to the bank and devour it in peace, he had to reckon with the tern. He had not risen a yard above the water when the tern noticed that he had quarry. Forthwith the tern committed a breach of the tenth commandment and then proceeded to try to violate the eighth. He made a swoop at the kingfisher, which the latter adroitly dodged, squeaking loudly but without dropping the frog. Then ensued a chase which was a sight for the gods. As regards pace on the wing the kingfisher is no match for the tern. In an aerial contest the slower flier has the advantage of being able to twist and turn more quickly than the rapid flier. Of this advantage the kingfisher availed itself to the full, so that the contest waxed fast and furious, the combatants moving in a series of curves, zigzags, circles, and other geometrical figures.

The kingfisher, notwithstanding that he had just swallowed a frog, evidently had not the least intention of delivering up his catch. The tern appeared equally determined to capture it. Seeing that he would never be able to enjoy the fruits of his prowess while he remained at the tank, the kingfisher changed his tactics and flew right away, disappearing behind some trees, with the tern in pursuit. The latter, however, did not follow far. He seemed suddenly to come to the conclusion that honesty is the best policy, and returned to the pond to endeavour to secure food in a more legitimate manner. I waited on for about half an hour, expecting to see the kingfisher reappear, but was disappointed. Then the tern went to seek pastures new, and left the ducks and a solitary wagtail in possession of the tank.

XXVIII THE RED TURTLE DOVE

Insects and birds, on account of the vast number of species they present, furnish the best available material for the study of evolution. It is owing to the fact that most Professors of Zoology are neither entomologists nor ornithologists that biological science is in its present deplorably backward condition. There exists scarcely a zoological theory, be it neo-Lamarckian or neo-Darwinian, that the competent ornithologist is not able to refute. For example, writing of sexual dimorphism in animals, Cunningham states that in the case of birds which exhibit such dimorphism the cocks differ essentially in habits from the hens, and in this way he, as a Lamarckian, would account for their external differences. “The cocks of common fowls and of the _Phasianidæ_ generally,” he writes, “are polygamous, fight with each other for the possession of females, and take no part in incubation or care of the young, and they differ from the hens in their enlarged brilliant plumage, spurs on the legs, and combs, wattles, or other excrescences on the head. In the _Columbidæ_, _per contra_, the males are not polygamous, but pair for life, the males do not fight, and share equally with the females in parental duties. Corresponding with the contrast of sexual habits is the contrast of sexual dimorphism, which is virtually absent in the _Columbidæ_.”

Mr. Cunningham evidently is not acquainted with the red turtle dove (_Œnopopelia tranqebarica_) so common in India, or he would not have asserted that sexual dimorphism is virtually absent in the _Columbidæ_. The sexes in this species are very different in appearance, and I know of nothing peculiar in its habits to explain this dissimilarity. The sexual dimorphism displayed by the red turtle dove is a fact equally awkward for the Wallaceians, because the habits of this species appear to be in no way different from those of the other doves. I have seen red turtle doves feeding in company with the three other common species of Indian dove; they eat the same kind of food, build the same ramshackle nests, and lay the usual white eggs. But I will not spend time in whipping a dying horse. The poor overburdened beast which we call Natural Selection has done yeoman service; for years he has pulled the great car of Zoology along the rugged road of knowledge, and now that he is past work, now that he stands tugging impotently at the traces, it is time to pension him and replace him by a new steed. Unfortunately, the drivers of the coach happen to be old gentlemen, so old that they fail to perceive that the coach is at a standstill. They believe that they are still travelling along as merrily as they were in Darwin’s time. Ere long their seats will be occupied by new drivers, who will give the good steed Natural Selection a well-earned rest, and replace him by a fresh animal called Mutation. Then once again the coach will resume its journey.