Douglas Dewar

“ As it rests on its perch its bright eyes are always on the look out for passing insects. When one comes into view, the bird sallies forth. Very beautiful is it as it sails on outstretched wings. The under surface of these is reddish bronze, so that their possessor seems to become alternately green and gold as the sun’s rays fall on the upper or lower surface of its pinions. Its long mandibles close upon its prey with a snap sufficiently loud to be audible from a distance of five or six yards. ”

“ Jules Michelet, than whom no more wrong-headed naturalist ever lived, declares that birds dread the night. “Heavy,” he writes, “for all creatures is the gloom of evening. . . . Night is equally terrible for the birds. . . . What monsters it conceals, what frightful chances for the bird lurk in its obscurity. Its nocturnal foes have this characteristic in common—their approach is noiseless. The screech-owl flies with a silent wing, as if wrapped in tow. The weasel insinuates its long body into the nest without disturbing a leaf. ”

“ Apart from the sharp notes of the warblers, the cooing of the doves, the hooting of the crow-pheasants, the wailing of the kites, the cawing of the crows, the screaming of the green parrots, the chattering of the mynas and the seven sisters, the trumpeting of the sarus cranes and the clamouring of the lapwings, almost the only bird voices commonly heard are those of the fantail flycatcher, the amadavat, the wagtail, the oriole, the roller and the sunbird. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The harsh cries of the rose-ringed paroquets give place to the softer call of the slaty-headed species. The monotonous tonk-tonk-tonk of the coppersmith and the kutur-kutur-kutur of the green barbet are no more heard; in their stead the curious calls of the great Himalayan barbet resound among the hills. The dissonant voices of the seven sisters no longer issue from the thicket; their place is taken by the weird but less unpleasant calls of the Himalayan streaked laughing-thrushes. Even the sounds of the night are different. ”

“ There would I lie beneath the deodars and, soothed by the rustle of their wind-caressed branches, drink in the pure cool air and listen to the cheerful double note of the cuckoo. The country-side in the plains presents a sorry spectacle. The gardens that had some beauty in the cold weather now display the abomination of desolation—a waste of shrivelled flowers, killed by the relentless sun. The spring crops have all been cut and the whole earth is dusty brown save for a few patches of young sugar-cane and the dust-covered verdure of the mango topes. ”

“ The nostrils of the crane are half-way down the beak, while they are at the base in the bill of the stork. The crane nests on the ground; the stork builds in a tree. Young storks are helpless creatures, while little cranes hop and run about from the moment they leave the egg. Lastly, the crane has a voice, a fine loud voice, a voice that can be heard a mile away, a voice like a trumpet, for its windpipe is coiled. King stork, on the other hand, has no voice; when he wants to make a joyful noise he is obliged to clap together his great mandibles. ”

“ What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If it is wicked of the falcon to devour a duck, I fail to see that it is virtuous of the robin to gobble up a worm.
But to return to the shrike. His beak is very falcon-like. The short, arched, upper mandible, with its pointed, downwardly-directed tip and strong projecting tooth, is a weapon admittedly adapted to the tearing-up of raw flesh. The butcher-bird waits for his quarry much as the buzzard does, sitting immobile on the highest branch of a bush or low tree, whence he scans the surface of the earth. ”

“ The wryneck is as retiring in disposition as the sparrow is obtrusive. I defy any one to dwell a week in a locality that boasts of a pair of sparrows without noticing them, but many a man spends the greater part of his life in India without once observing a wryneck. The greyish-brown plumage of the wryneck, delicately mottled and barred all over with a darker shade of brown, harmonises very closely with the trunks of trees or the bare earth on which it spends so much of its time, and thus it often eludes observation. ”

“ What a transformation does a shower of rain effect in the myna. As a rule the bird looks as smart as a lifeguardsman; its uniform is so spick and span that the veriest martinet could find no fault with it. But after the rain has been falling for ten minutes the myna looks as disreputable as a babbler. A shower is the signal for all the birds to let themselves go and have a spree. No bird then minds how untidy it is, for it knows that there is none to point the finger of scorn at it; all are in the same boat, or, at any rate, in the same shower of rain. ”

“ Towards the end of June the chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk of Horsfield's nightjar is not often heard, but the bird continues to utter its soft churring note. The iora's cheerful calls still resound through the shady mango tope. The sunbirds, the fantail flycatchers, the orioles, the golden-backed woodpeckers, the white-breasted kingfishers and the black partridges call as lustily as ever, and the bulbuls continue to twitter to one another "stick to it!" With the first fall of rain the tunes of the paradise flycatchers and the king-crows change. ”

“ He is small, so that the volume of sound he emits is not great, but it is penetrating. Even as the cheery lay of the Otocompsa bulbuls forms the dominant note of the bird chorus in our southern hill stations, so does the less melodious but not less cheerful call of the flycatcher-warblers run as an undercurrent through the melody of the feathered choir of the Himalayas. ”

“ When a hungry Butastur sees flitting all around him potential meals in the shape of small birds, his feelings must be akin to those of the impecunious man in the comic song who, as he contemplates the insurance policy on the life of his shrewish wife, cries out: “Stone broke with fifty quid staring me in the face!” The white-eyed buzzard has perforce to feed upon very humble quarry, upon the creeping and crawling things, upon beetles and insects, with an occasional rat or frog. ”

“ Speaking generally, the birds of India are to the feathered folk of the British Isles as wine is to water. The birds, such as the blue tits, which we looked upon in our youth as possessing gay plumage, seem to have lost some of their lustre when we again set eyes upon them after a sojourn in the East. It is not that they or we have grown older, that their feathers have lost their ancient splendour or that the rose rims to our spectacles have worn away. The explanation lies in the fact that we have for years been looking upon allied species of brighter hue. ”

“ Those of the hillsides which are not afforested are brown, arid, and desolate, and the valleys, in addition to being unpleasantly hot, are dry and dusty. The foliage of the trees lacks freshness, and everywhere there is a remarkable absence of water, save in the valleys through which the rivers flow. On the other hand, September is the month in which the Himalayas attain perfection or something approaching it. The eye is refreshed by the bright emerald garment which the hills have newly donned. The foliage is green and luxuriant. ”

“ Next to its colour the most striking thing about the blue jay is its wonderful power of flight. Ordinarily the bird is content to flap along at an easy pace, but, when it likes, it can move for a little as though it were shot out of a catapult; moreover, it is able to completely change its course with startling rapidity; hence even the swiftest birds of prey find it no child’s play to catch a roller bird. A good idea of its aerial performances may be obtained by watching it attack a kite that persists in hovering about in the neighbourhood of the nest. ”

“ Even more grotesque is the adjutant. This is a stork with an enormous bill, a tiny head, and long neck, both innocent of feathers. From the front of the neck hangs a considerable pouch, which the bird can inflate at will. Round the base of the neck is a ruff of white feathers that causes the bird to look as though it had donned a lady’s feather boa. It is the habit of the adjutant to stand with its head buried in its shoulders, so that, when looked at from behind, it resembles a hunch-backed, shrivelled-up old man, wearing a grey swallow-tailed coat. ”

“ This is not the breeding season, therefore the bird choir is not at its best, nevertheless the feathered folk everywhere proclaim the pleasure of existence by making a joyful noise. From the crowded jhil emanate the sweet twittering of the wagtails, the clanging call of the geese, the sibilant note of the whistling teal, the curious a-onk of the brahminy ducks, the mewing of the jacanas and the quacking of many kinds of ducks. ”

“ A silent cuckoo is unthinkable. The generating of sound is to the cuckoo what wine is to the wine-bibber, poker to the gambler, fighting to the soldier, “votes for women” to the Suffragette. According to cuculine philosophy, life without noise is but the image of death. The reason of this is obvious. At the breeding season a vast amount of surplus energy is generated in birds. This has to find some outlet. It is usually dissipated in the form of vocal effort, the dances and antics of courtship, and the labours of nest building and feeding the young. ”

“ Not a few regard the cry as the reverse of pleasant, and consider the bird a nuisance. As the bird is always on the move—its call at one moment ascends from the depths of a leafy valley and at the next emanates from a tree on the summit of some hill—the note does not get on one's nerves as that of the coppersmith does. Whether men like its note or not, they all agree that it is plaintive and wailing. ”

“ As they are larger than a man’s fist, and appear while the branches are yet bare, a cotton tree in flower is a very conspicuous and beautiful object. But it is of the feathered folk that visit this tree that I would write, not of the splendour of its blossom. Even before the March sun has risen and commenced to dispel the pleasant coolness of the night the cotton tree is the scene of riot and revelry. ”

“ Little flocks of minivets display their painted wings as they flit hither and thither, hunting insects on the leaves of trees. Amid the foliage warblers, wood-shrikes, bulbuls, tree-pies, orioles and white-eyes busily seek for food. Pied and golden-backed woodpeckers, companies of nuthatches, and, here and there, a wryneck move about on the trunks and branches, looking into every cranny for insects. King-crows, bee-eaters, fantail and grey-headed flycatchers seek their quarry on the wing, making frequent sallies into the open from their leafy bowers. ”

“ I must confess that, when I see a great company of the quacking community, the sportsman in me gets the upper hand of the naturalist, the lust of killing prevails over the love of observation. I know of few greater pleasures than to spend a morning at a well-stocked jhil on a superb winter’s day in Northern India, accompanied, of course, by a number of fellow-sportsmen; for duck shooting is poor sport for a single gun. With but one man after them it is the ducks rather than the human being who enjoy the sport. ”

“ I ask again, even if the hen does notice the display of the cock, has she any sense of beauty? Is it likely that a bird, which lays its eggs in a dirty dark hole and squats in that hole for a fortnight until it stinketh in such a manner as to be perceptible to the Indian coolie, appreciates the beauty of the corona of the cock or of the bold black-and-white markings on his wings? I decline to attribute to the hen hoopoe all the wiles of a human coquette. ”

“ Song-birds are numerous in India. They do not make the same impression upon us as do our English birds because their song has not those associations which render dear to us the melody of birds in the homeland. Further, there is nothing in India which corresponds to the English spring, when the passion of the earth is at its highest, because there is in that country no sad and dismal winter-time, when life is sluggish and feeble. The excessive joy, the rapture, the ecstasy with which we greet the spring in the British Isles is, to a certain extent, a reaction. ”

“ At rare intervals his cousin, the coppersmith, utters a soft wow and thereby reminds us that he is in the land of the living. These two species, more especially the latter, seem to dislike the cold weather. They revel in the heat; it is when the thermometer stands at something over 100° in the shade that they feel like giants refreshed, and repeat their loud calls with wearying insistence throughout the hours of daylight.
The nuthatches begin to tune up in January. They sing with more cheer than harmony, their love-song being a sharp penetrating tee-tee-tee-tee-tee. ”