Part 6

Before a minute has passed the rose-finches, who have taken refuge in a tree, perceive that there was no ground for alarm. They then drop to the ground in twos and threes, so that, although the birds begin to return almost as soon as they have fled into the foliage, some little time elapses before the whole of the flock is again seeking food on the ground. The reformation of a flock is a pretty sight—a shower of little birds falling from a tree like leaves in autumn.

XIV BIRDS ON THE LAWN

In some parts of India the hot-weather nights are sufficiently cool to allow the European inhabitants to dispense with punkas and to enjoy refreshing sleep in the open beneath the starlit sky. He who spends the night under such conditions sees and hears much of the birds. Not an hour passes in which the stillness of the darkness is not broken by the voice of some owl or cuckoo. Most of our Indian cuckoos are as nocturnal as owls. The brain-fever bird (_Hierococcyx varius_)—most vociferous of the cuculine tribe—seems to require no sleep.

The human sleeper, no matter how early he wakes in the morning, finds that some of the feathered folk have already begun the day. Every diurnal bird is up and about long before the rising of the sun. In the daylight the gauze curtains which kept the mosquitoes at bay during the night, form a most convenient cache from which to observe the doings of the birds. Birds do not see through the meshes of the mosquito nets. Eyesight is largely a matter of training. This explains why the vision of birds is so keen in some respects and so defective in others. A bird of prey while floating in the air does not fail to notice a small animal on the ground 3000 feet below. Nevertheless, that same bird will allow itself to become entangled in a coarse net stretched out in front of a tethered bird. I once asked a falconer how he would explain such inconsistencies in the behaviour of raptorial birds. He replied that in his opinion the bird of prey sees the net but fails to appreciate its nature, that the falcon looks upon the net spread before its quarry as a spider’s web, as a gossamer structure that can be contemptuously swept aside. I think that the falconer’s explanation is not the correct one. I believe that the bird of prey really does not see the net. It has eyes only for its quarry. It is not trained to look out for snares, having no experience of them under natural conditions. A bird that had several times been snared while stooping at its prey would learn the nature of a net and avoid it.

Similarly, birds, being unaccustomed to see living creatures emerge from apparently solid structures, do not look for human beings inside mosquito nets, and so fail to observe them. The consequence is that the birds hop and strut about the lawn within a few feet of my bed, or even perch on the mosquito curtain frame, utterly unconscious of my presence.

There is to me something very fascinating in thus watching at close quarters the ways of my feathered friends. My compound boasts of a lawn, sufficiently large for three tennis courts, which owing to much watering, mowing, and rolling is green and velvet-like. This lawn is a popular resort for many birds of the vicinity.

In England blackbirds, thrushes, robins, starlings, and sparrows are the birds which frequent lawns. Of these the sparrows are the only ones found in our Indian gardens. Sparrows are very partial to my lawn. Throughout the day numbers of them hop about on the turf, looking for objects so small that I have not been able to make out what they are. The fact that sparrows are greatly addicted to a lawn that is watered and mown twice a week serves to show that _Passer domesticus_ is not so black as he is painted by his detractors. The sparrows cannot come to my lawn for any purpose other than that of looking for insects.

The first birds to visit the lawn every morning are a pair of coucals, or crow-pheasants (_Centropus sinensis_). They appear on the scene with great punctuality about an hour before sunrise. The crow-pheasant is one of the most familiar of Indian birds. It is neither a crow nor a pheasant, nevertheless there is much to be said in favour of its popular name, because the bird has altogether the appearance of a crow that has exchanged wings and tail with a pheasant. It is black all over save for its ruby-coloured eye and chestnut-hued wings. It belongs to the cuckoo family, but, unlike the majority of its brethren, builds a nest and incubates its eggs. It is characterised by an elongated hind toe, which he who lies behind the mosquito net may observe as its possessor struts by. There is something very pompous about the strut of the crow-pheasant. Were it an inhabitant of Whitechapel, its friends would undoubtedly enquire whether it was a fact that it had purchased the street! But the sight of an insect on the lawn causes the coucal to throw dignity to the winds. Its sedate walk becomes transformed into a bustling waddle as it gives chase to the insect with a gait like that of a stout, nervous lady hurrying across a road thronged with traffic. Crow-pheasants feed largely on insects, and it is in search of these that they frequent the lawn. Their food, however, is not confined to such small fry; they are very partial to snakes, and so are useful birds to have in the garden.

Hoopoes (_Upupa indica_) are constant visitors to my lawn. They revel in soft ground. The comparatively hard probe-like bill of the hoopoe enables the bird to extract insects from ground on which the soft-billed snipe could make no impression. But hoopoes prefer soft ground; from it they can obtain food with but little effort. Unfortunately for them, velvety lawns are not common in India; hence the birds flock to those that exist as eagerly as Europeans rush to the Himalayas in June. A few mornings ago I counted twenty-seven hoopoes feeding on my lawn. Occasionally a hoopoe perches on one of the bars from which my mosquito curtains hang, and thus unconsciously exposes himself to close scrutiny on my part. There are few birds so delightful to watch as hoopoes. Their form is unique. Their colouring is striking and pleasing. Then they are such fussy little creatures. When feeding they behave as if they were in a violent hurry. The _modus operandi_ is a hasty tap of the bill here and another there, and if these reveal nothing promising, a few hurried steps, then more probing. The majority of these tappings and probings reveal nothing, but every now and then a spot is discovered beneath which an ant-lion, earth-worm, or other creature lies buried. Then the fun waxes fast and furious; the hoopoe begins to excavate in real earnest, and plies its bill as eagerly as a terrier scratches away the loose earth that conceals its retreating quarry. After a few seconds this strenuous probing and digging usually results in some creature being dragged out of the earth. This is swallowed by the hoopoe after a little manipulation rendered necessary by the length of the bird’s bill. Having disposed of its quarry the insatiable hoopoe passes on, without a pause, to seek for further victims. With twenty or thirty hoopoes thus at work, day after day, it is strange that the insect store of my lawn does not become exhausted.

While the hoopoe is feeding, its fan-like crest remains tightly closed. This attitude of the crest denotes business. The corona of the hoopoe is as mobile as are the ears of a horse. There is more expression in it than in the face of many a man or woman.

Mynas are, of course, always to be found on the lawn, but as these birds feed largely on grasshoppers, they seek their food by preference amid grass which is drier and longer than that of my lawn.

At the time when the grass is irrigated numbers of pied mynas (_Sturnopastor contra_) and paddy-birds (_Ardeola grayii_) visit the lawn. The former strut about, and the latter stand near the place where the water trickles from the pipe. Both come in quest of creatures driven from their underground homes by the water.

Occasionally two or three crows visit the lawn; these come to gratify their curiosity rather than for food. Crows are inquisitive creatures, and cannot resist visiting any spot where they see other birds enjoying themselves. Wagtails are birds which are very partial to lawns, but all the Indian species, with one exception, leave India in April or May, so that their graceful forms do not delight the eye in the hot weather.

XV THE GREY HORNBILL

Hornbills, like the Jews, are a peculiar race. There are no other birds like unto them. They are fowls of extravagant form. Their bodies are studies in disproportion. The beak and tail of each species would fit admirably a bird twice as big as their actual possessor, while birds less than half their size might well look askance at the wings with which hornbills are blessed. With the solitary exception of the “cake walk” of the adjutant (_Leptoptilus dubius_), I know of no sight in Nature more absurd than the flight of the hornbill. By dint of a series of vigorous flaps of its disproportionately short wings the bird manages to propel itself through the air. But the efforts put forth are too strenuous to be maintained for many seconds at a time. When it has managed to acquire a little impetus, the great bird gives its pinions a rest, and sails at a snail’s pace for a few seconds, after which, in order to save itself from falling, it violently flaps its wings again, and thus manages to win its way laboriously from one grove to another, in much the same way as the primitive flying reptiles must have done. Nor is the excitement over when it reaches its destination. Owing to the weight of the beak, the hornbill is in danger of toppling over, head foremost, as it alights on a branch, and assuredly would sometimes do so but for the long tail which serves to balance the great beak. So vigorously does the hornbill have to flap its wings during flight that the sound of the air rushing through them can be heard for nearly half a mile in the case of the largest species.

All hornbills are grotesque. The grey species is, however, the least grotesque, and approaches the most nearly to the appearance of normal birds. Three species of grey hornbill occur in India. The common grey hornbill (_Lophoceros birostris_) is characterised by the possession of what is known as a casque—an appendage which the other two species of grey hornbill lack. This is a horny excrescence from the upper surface of the beak. In some species the casque is so large as to extend over the greater part of the head and beak. No one has yet discovered its use. I am inclined to think that it has no use. The Malabar and Ceylonese grey hornbills, whose habits are identical with those of the common grey hornbill, thrive very well, in spite of the fact that they have no casque.

_Lophoceros birostris_ is a bird nearly two feet in length. The prevailing hue of the plumage is greyish brown. The bill, which is four inches long, and the casque are blackish. Like the other members of this peculiar family, the grey hornbill possesses eyelashes, which increase the strangeness of its appearance. This species is found in most parts of the plains of India, except the Malabar coast, where it is replaced by _Lophoceros griseus_. The grey hornbill of Ceylon is the species _L. gingalensis_.

The majority of species of hornbill shun the vicinity of human beings. They are accordingly to be found only in the Terai and other great forest tracts. The grey hornbill, on the contrary, shows no fear of man. Although strictly arboreal in its habits, it occurs in those parts of the country that are not thickly wooded. A grove of trees is all that it demands. Grey hornbills are birds of the highway and the village. Usually they go about in small flocks.

_Lophoceros birostris_ is particularly abundant in the sub-Himalayan districts of the United Provinces. In Oudh and the eastern part of Agra almost every village has its colony of grey hornbills. These hamlets are nearly always surrounded by trees, usually bamboos, among which the hornbills live. In many parts of Northern India grey hornbills are commonly seen in the avenues of trees which are planted along the high roads to shelter wayfarers from the midday sun.

Hornbills feed largely on fruit and are fond of that of the pipal and the banian trees. Their great bills are admirably suited to the plucking of fruit. When the hornbill has severed a berry, it tosses it into the air, catches it in the bill as it falls, and then swallows it. This is the most expeditious way of passing the food from the tip of its bill to the entrance to its gullet.

The cry of the grey hornbill is feeble for so large a bird, and is querulous, like that of the common kite.

The nesting habits of the hornbills are very remarkable. The eggs are deposited in a cavity in a tree. The cavity selected may be the result of decay in the wood, or it may have been hollowed out by a woodpecker or other bird. In either case the hornbill has usually to enlarge the cavity, for, being a big bird, it requires a spacious nest. When all preparations have been made, the female enters the nest hole, and does not emerge until some weeks later, when the eggs have been hatched and the young are ready to fly. Having entered the nest, the hen hornbill proceeds to reduce the size of the orifice by which she gained access to the nest cavity, by plastering it up with her ordure until the aperture is no more than a mere slit, only just large enough to enable her to insert her beak through it. Thus, during the whole period of incubation and brooding she is entirely dependent on the cock for food. And he never leaves her in the lurch. He is most assiduous in his attentions. When he reaches the trunk in which his wife is sitting, he, while clinging to the bark with his claws, taps the trunk with his bill, and thus apprises her of his arrival. She then thrusts her bill through the orifice and receives the food. When at length the young are ready to leave the nest, the mother emerges with her plumage in a much-bedraggled condition.

Why the hen hornbill behaves thus, why she is content to submit periodically to a term of “simple imprisonment,” is one of the unsolved riddles of Nature. This curious habit is peculiar to the hornbills, but seems to be common to every member of the family. In this connection it is interesting to note that the hoopoes, which are nearly related to the hornbills, have somewhat similar nesting habits. The hen hoopoe, although she does not adopt the heroic measure of closing up the entrance to the nest cavity, is said never to leave the nest until the young have emerged from the eggs. No sight is commoner in India than that of a hoopoe carrying food to the aperture of a hole in a tree, or in a building made of mud, in which his spouse is sitting. Another curious feature in the nesting habits of the hornbill does not appear to have been mentioned by any observer, and that is that during the nesting season hornbills go about in threes, and not in pairs. I have noticed this on two occasions, and Mr. Horne, in his interesting account of the nesting of the grey hornbill at Mainpuri, which is recorded in Hume’s _Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds_, mentions the presence of a third hornbill, who “used to hover about, watch proceedings, and sometimes quarrel with her accepted lord, but he never brought food to the female.” Although grey hornbills are by no means uncommon birds, very few nests seem to have been taken. The result is that there are several points regarding their nidification that need elucidation. Those who love the fowls of the air should lose no opportunity of studying the ways of these truly remarkable birds.

XVI THE FLAMINGO

Ornithologists, as is their wont, have disputed much among themselves as to whether the flamingo is a stork-like duck or a duck-like stork. Indians accept the former view and call the bird the King Goose (_Raj Hans_); their opinion was shared by Jerdon, who classed the flamingo among the geese. Likewise, Stuart Baker has given flamingos a place among the Indian ducks and their allies.

The flamingo is both wader and swimmer. It has long legs, the better to wade with, and webbed feet admirably adapted to natation. The bird certainly wades by preference. I have never seen it in water sufficiently deep to render swimming necessary or even possible. Those who have been more fortunate state that the swimming movements of the flamingo resemble those of a swan. I doubt whether flamingos ever swim from choice, but the webbed feet are likely to be useful, especially in the case of young birds, when flamingos are swept off their feet by the wind in a violent storm.

Two species of flamingo occur in India. These are known as _Phœnicopterus roseus_ and _P. minor_, or the common and the lesser flamingo. As the former is the one most often seen in India let us concentrate our attention on it. It is as tall as many a man, and measures over four feet from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail. Of these four feet the greater portion consists of neck, which is very supple; a flamingo when preening its feathers often twists the neck so that it assumes the shape of a figure of eight. The general hue of the bird is white tipped with rosy pink; the wings are crimson and black, hence the appropriate scientific name, _Phœnicopterus_, wings of flame. The bill is pale pink, tipped with black, while the legs are reddish pink.

Every Anglo-Indian has seen flamingos in the wild state, if not in India, at any rate from the deck of a ship as it crept through the Suez Canal. The shallow lakes and lagoons in the vicinity of the Canal abound with flamingos. These beautiful birds are to be seen in numbers throughout the cold weather in the shallow lakes and backwaters round about Madras. Flamingos are very numerous in Ceylon, where they are known to the Singalese as the “English Soldier Birds” on account of their “crimson tunics” and upright martial bearing.

A flock of flamingos is a fine spectacle. Some years ago I saw near the Pulicat Lake about two hundred of these birds. They were perhaps half a mile from the house-boat. Their white bodies showed up well against a background of blue water. Some of them were feeding with heads underwater, others stood as erect as soldiers at attention and as motionless as statues; a few were moving with great precision, like recruits under training. Portions of the flock were congregated in small groups, apparently in solemn conclave. Dignity and solemnity are the distinguishing features of the flamingo. After watching the flock for fully half an hour I fired a gun. I did not try to kill any of them. They were out of range. I fired because I wanted to see the birds take to their wings, to see them rise like a “glorious exhalation.” The report of the gun seemed to cause no alarm. There was none of that fluster and hurry that most birds display when they hear the sound of firing. The flamingos rose in a stately manner; they did not all leave the water simultaneously. The birds took to their wings by twos and threes, so that it was not until more than a minute after the firing of the gun that all of them were in the air. As their wings opened the colour of the birds changed from white to crimson, the latter being the hue of the lining of their wings. It was as if red limelight had been thrown on to the whole flock.

During flight, the long white neck, that terminates in the pink-and-black bill, is stretched out in front, and the pink legs point behind, so that the neck and legs form one straight line, broken by the crimson wings, which are flapped very slowly. The great birds sailed thus majestically for a few hundred yards and then sank to the water.

When flamingos are about to alight the legs leave the horizontal position assumed during flight and come slowly forward until they touch the water. The whole flock settles without making any splash. It has never been my good fortune to watch the flight of flamingos at very close quarters. I will, therefore, reproduce from the _Saturday Review_ Colonel Willoughby Verner’s description of those he witnessed in Spain: “What a wonderful sight it was! The curious-shaped heads and bulbous beaks at the end of the long, thin, outstretched, and snake-like necks, the small compact bodies, shining white below and rosy pink above, the crimson coverts and glossy black of the quickly moving pinions, and the immensely long legs projecting stiffly behind, ending in the queer-shaped feet. Surely no other bird on God’s earth presents such an incongruous and almost uncanny shape and yet affords such a beautiful spectacle of colour and movement. Onward they sped, now in one long sinuous line; now with some of the birds in the centre or rear increasing their speed and surging up ‘line abreast’ of those in front of them, and again falling back and resuming their posts, ever and anon uttering their weird, trumpeting, goose-like call. They were flying not fifteen feet above the water, and as they passed abreast of me, the moving mass of white, pink, crimson, and black was mirrored in the placid surface of the laguna below them which shone like a sheet of opal in the setting rays of the sun.”

The beak of the flamingo is a curious structure. It is bent almost to a right angle in the middle, so that when the basal portion is horizontal the tip of the bill points towards the ground, and when the long neck is directed downwards (as must be done when the bird feeds because of the length of the legs) the terminal half of the bill is parallel to the ground, and the tip points between the bird’s toes. Thus the flamingo when feeding assumes the position it would adopt when about to stand on its head! The upper mandible then is placed along the ground, and, for the convenience of the bird, is flattened, while the lower mandible, which is uppermost when the bird is feeding, is arched like the upper mandible in most birds. This arrangement gives the flamingo a grotesque appearance.