Part 12

Redstarts live largely on the ground, from which they pick their food. This appears to consist exclusively of tiny insects. They sometimes hawk their quarry on the wing. They are usually found near a hedge or thicket, into which they take refuge when disturbed. They show but little fear of man, and, consequently, frequent gardens. They occasionally perch on the housetop. Indeed, they are quite robin-like in their habits, and the species, thanks to its reddish abdomen, looks more like the familiar English robin than does the Indian robin.

The Indian redstart, like all its family, has a peculiar quivering motion of its tail, which is especially noticeable immediately after it has alighted on a perch; hence its Hindustani name, Thir-thira, the trembler. Its Telugu name is said to be Nuni-budi-gadu—the oil-bottle bird—a name of which I am unable to offer any explanation. Eurasian boys call it the “devil bird,” for reasons best known to themselves.

The redstart stays in India until May, when it goes into Tibet and Afghanistan to breed. A few individuals are said to spend the summer in India. There are in the British Museum specimens supposed to have been shot at Sambhar in July and Ahmednagar in June. I have never observed this bird in India between the end of May and the beginning of September, and am inclined to think that the above dates have been incorrectly recorded.

XXX THE NIGHT HERON

Some American millionaires are said to sleep for only three hours out of the twenty-four. I do not believe this; I regard the story as a fabrication of the halfpenny paper. But, even if it be true, the night heron (Nycticorax griseus) is able to eclipse the performance. That bird only sleeps when it has nothing better to do. It looks upon sleep as a luxury, not a necessity. As its name implies, it is a creature of the night; but it is equally a day bird. You will never catch it napping. Just before sunset, when the crows, wearied by the iniquities they have wrought during the day, are wending their way to the corvine dormitory, the night herons sally forth from the trees (“roosts” would be a misnomer for them) in which they have spent the day and betake themselves, in twos and threes, to the water’s edge. As they fly they make the welkin ring with their cries of waak, waak, or quaal, quaal—sounds which may be likened to the quacking of a distressed duck. Having arrived at their feeding-ground, they separate and proceed to catch fish and frogs in the manner of the orthodox heron. After an all-night sitting, or rather standing, in shallow water, they return to their day quarters, where they are popularly supposed to sleep. They may possibly spend the day in slumber when they have neither nests to build nor young to feed. I am not in a position to deny this, never having visited a heronry on such an occasion. I speak, however, as one having authority when I say that all through the nesting season the night heron works harder during the hours of daylight than the British workman does. At the present time (April) thirty or forty night herons are engaged in nesting operations in the tall trees that grow on the islands in the ornamental pond that graces the Lahore Zoological Gardens, and as I visit those gardens almost daily I have had some opportunity of observing the behaviour of our night bird during the daytime. I may here say that night herons seem very partial to Zoological Gardens, inasmuch as they also resort to the Calcutta “Zoo” for nesting purposes. This is, of course, as it should be. Every well-conditioned bird should bring up its family in a “zoo” by preference. Had birds the sense to understand this, many of them would be spared the miseries of captivity.

Before discoursing upon its nesting habits it is fitting that I should try to describe the night heron, so that the bird may be recognised when next seen. I presume that everyone knows what a heron looks like, but possibly there exist persons who would be at a loss to say wherein it differs from a stork or a crane. It may be readily distinguished from the latter by its well-developed hind toe. Storks and herons are perching waders, while cranes do not trust themselves to trees because they cannot perch, having no hind toe to grasp with. The heron’s bill is flatter and more dagger-shaped than that of a stork. Moreover the former possesses, inside the middle claw, a little comb, which the stork lacks. The heron flies with neck drawn in, head pressed against the back, and beak pointing forwards. It never sails in the air, but progresses, like the flying-fox, with a steady, continuous flapping motion. So much for herons in general. To those who would learn more of these and other long-legged fowls I commend Mr. Frank Finn’s excellent little book, entitled How to Know the Indian Waders.

The night heron is considerably smaller than the common heron—the heron we see in England, and larger than the Indian paddy bird—the ubiquitous fowl that looks brown when it is standing and white when it is flying. The head and back of the night heron are black, the remainder of the upper plumage is grey, the lower parts are white. There are two or three long, white, narrow feathers, which grow from the back of the head and hang down like a pigtail. The eye is rich ruby-red. Young night herons are brown with yellowish spots, and the eye is deep yellow.

Any resident of Madras may see this species if he repair to the Redhills Tank. One of the islands in that tank supports a considerable population of night herons and little cormorants. The former nest in the trees on the island in July. The place is well worth visiting then. As the boat carrying a human being approaches the islet, all the night herons fly away without a sound. They love their young, but not so much as they love themselves, so they leave their offspring at the first approach of the human visitor and remain away until he turns his back on their nesting-ground. A night heron never allows his valour to get the better of his discretion. The nest is a platform of twigs placed anywhere in a tree. Four pale greenish-blue eggs are laid. A heronry is a filthy place. The possessors are, like our Indian brethren, utterly regardless of the principles of sanitation. The whole island will be found white with the droppings of the birds, and the unsavoury smell that emanates therefrom would do credit to a village inhabited by chamars. Although they are evil-tempered, cantankerous creatures, night herons always nest in company. It is no uncommon thing to find half a dozen nests in the same tree, so that the sitting birds are able to compare notes while engaged in the duties of incubation. Both the parent birds take part in nest construction, and, as they work by day, it is quite easy to watch the process. They wrench small branches from trees, and, as they have only the beak with which to grasp these, they find twig-gathering hard work. When a twig has been secured it is dropped on to the particular part of the tree in which the bird has thought fit to build. Forty or fifty twigs dropped haphazard in a heap constitute the nest. The birds make a great noise while engaged in building. Quarrels are of frequent occurrence. It sometimes happens that two birds want the same twig; this invariably gives rise to noisy altercation. The crows too are provocative of much bad language on the part of the night herons. Whenever any of the crows of the neighbourhood has nothing else to do, he says to a kindred spirit: “Come, let us worry the night herons.” Whereupon the pair—Arcades ambo—go and pretend to show the herons how to build a nest.

When, my friends, you consider the untidiness and filthiness of the heron’s nest, you will be able to appreciate to the full the audacity of the latest falsehood circulated by the plume trade—to wit, the egret plucks out its nuptial plumes, which constitute the “osprey” of commerce, and weaves these into the nest to make it more cosy; and, after the young ones are fledged, some honest fellow visits the nest and disentangles the plumes therefrom!

A baby heron is a disgustingly ugly creature. It is a living caricature. Patches of long hair-like feathers are studded, apparently haphazard, over its otherwise naked body and give it an indescribably grotesque appearance. It looks like a bird in its dotage. If you lift a young heron out of the nest you will probably find that his “corporation” is distended to bursting-point, and, if you do not handle him carefully, a half-digested frog will, as likely as not, drop out of him!

The farther north one goes the earlier in the year does the night heron breed. In Kashmir the nesting season is in full swing in March. In the Punjab April and May are the nesting months; in Madras the birds do not begin to build until July; and I have seen eggs at the end of August. It is my belief that the night heron is a migratory bird. During the winter months not a single specimen of that species is to be seen in or about Lahore, but they migrate there regularly every April. They disappear again to I know not where when they have reared up their young.

XXI THE CEMENT OF BIRD MASONS

Birds may be divided into two classes—those which build nests and those which do not. To the latter belong the parasitic starlings and cuckoos, which drop their eggs in the nests of other birds; those, such as plovers, which lay their eggs on the bare ground; and those which deposit them in holes, in the earth, in trees, in banks, or in buildings, as, for example, the Indian roller or blue jay (Coracias indica).

Intermediate between the birds that build nests and those which do not—for there are no sudden transitions, no sharply defined lines of division in nature—are those birds which merely furnish, more or less cosily, the ready-made holes in which they deposit their eggs. The common myna (Acridotheres tristis) affords a familiar instance of this class of birds. Some of the nest-builders are really excavators; they dig out their nests in a tree or bank. The woodpeckers and the bee-eaters are examples of these. The rest of the nest-builders actually construct their nurseries. These buildings are of various degrees of complexity. Crows, doves, birds of prey, herons, and a few other families are content with a mere platform of sticks and twigs, which rests in the fork of a tree, or on a ledge or other suitable surface. The birds which build primitive nests of this description are not put to the trouble of seeking or manufacturing any cohesive materials. It is only when the nest takes some definite shape and form that means have to be found of binding together the materials of which it is composed, and of attaching the whole to that which supports the nest. In such cases the component materials are either woven or cemented together. It is among the woven nests that we find the highest examples of avian architecture. The homes of the weaver-bird (Ploceus baya) and of the Indian wren-warbler (Prinia inornata) are constructed with a skill that defies competition. But it is not with these wonderful nests that we are concerned to-day. It must suffice to say that woven nests have to be supported; they cannot float in the air. There are various methods of supporting them. The nest may be firmly wedged into a forked branch. It may be bound to its supports, as in the case of the nest of the king crow (Dicrurus ater). The supporting branches may be worked into its structure, as is done by Prinia inornata. The nest may hang, as does that of Ploceus baya. It may be cemented to its support, as in the case of the nests of the various swifts; or it may rest on supporting fibres which are slung on to a forked branch, just as a prawn net is slung on to its frame. The golden oriole (Oriolus kundoo) resorts to this ingenious device.

Coming now to those nurseries in which the building materials are cemented together, we must first consider the nests of the swallows and swifts. These birds secrete a very sticky saliva, which quickly hardens when it is exposed to the air. This constitutes an excellent cement. Watch a swift working at its nest under the eaves of a house. It flies to it with a feather or piece of straw carried far back in the angle of its mouth, hangs itself by means of its four forwardly directed toes on to the half-completed nest, which is stuck on to the wall of the house, and, having carefully placed the feather or straw in the required position, holds it there until the sticky saliva it has poured over it has had time to harden and thus firmly glue the added piece of material to the nest. The bits of straw, feathers, etc., may be said to constitute the bricks, and the saliva the cement of the swift’s nest. Some swifts build their nests exclusively of their saliva. These constitute the “edible birds’ nests” of commerce, and may be likened to houses built entirely of cement. The martin (Chelidon urbica), the common swallow (Hirundo rustica), and the wire-tailed swallow (H. smithii) construct their nests of clay and saliva. They repair to some puddle and there gather moist clay, which they stick on to some building, so as to form a projecting saucer-shaped shelf. In this the eggs are laid. But nature has not vouchsafed sticky saliva to all birds, so that many of them have to find their cement just as they have to seek out the other building materials they use.

The chestnut-bellied nuthatch (Sitta castaneiventris), which nestles in holes in trees, fills up all but a small part of the entrance with mud “consolidated with some viscid seed of a parasitical plant.”

The hornbills close up the greater part of the orifice of the hole in which they nest with their droppings mixed with a little earth.

Hume informs us the rufous-fronted wren-warbler (Franklinia buchanani) utilises a fungus as its cement. “In all the nests that I have seen,” he writes, “the egg-cavity has been lined with something very soft. In many of the nests the lining is composed of soft, felt-like pieces of some dull salmon-coloured fungus, with which the whole interior is closely plastered.”

The cement which is most commonly used is cobweb. I do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that cobweb enters extensively into the structure of the nests of more than one hundred species of Indian birds. What birds would do without our friend the spider I cannot imagine.

The nest of some birds is literally a house of cobwebs. The beautiful white-browed fan-tail fly-catcher (Rhipidura albifrontata) is a case in point. Its nursery is so thickly plastered with cobweb as to sometimes look quite white. It is a tiny cup that rests on a branch of a bush or small tree, and is composed of fine twigs and roots, which are cemented to the supporting branch and to one another by cobweb. This the bird takes from the webs of those trap-door spiders which weave large nets on the ground.

Utterly regardless of the feelings of the possessor of the web, the fly-catcher takes beakful after beakful of it, and smears it over the part of the branch on which the nest will rest. It then sticks to this some dried grass stems or other fine material, next adds more cobweb, and continues in this manner until the neat little cup-shaped nest is completed. This, as I have already said, is thickly coated exteriorly with cobweb to give it additional strength.

The sunbirds or honeysuckers make nearly as extensive use of cobweb in nest construction as do the fan-tailed fly-catchers. Loten’s honeysucker (Arachnechthra lotenia) seeks until it finds a large spider’s web stretched horizontally across some bush; it then proceeds to build its nursery in the middle of this. As the material is added the nest grows heavier, and thus depresses the middle of the web until it at last assumes the shape of a V, in the angle of which the mango-shaped nest is situated. The nursery is thus suspended from the bush by the four corners of the cobweb.

A spider’s web looks such a flimsy affair that it does not seem possible that it could support a nest peopled by a number of birds. Sometimes the nest derives additional support by being attached to other branches. Moreover, a tiny creature such as a sunbird is almost as light as the proverbial feather. Then cobweb is exceedingly elastic, and, considering its attenuity, is able to support a surprising amount of weight. It occasionally happens that the common garden spider (Epeira diadema) is not able to find a point d’appui to which it can attach the lower part of its web; it then utilises a stone (which may be as much as a quarter-inch in each dimension) as a plummet to make the nest taut. This comparatively heavy stone hangs by a single thread.

I have sometimes amused myself by testing the strength of a strand of cobweb stretched across a path, by hanging bits of match or other light material on it. In one experiment a gossamer thread, thirty feet in length, stretched across a road, bore the weight of five blades of grass which were hung upon it. The sixth blade proved to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

The strength of cobweb is proved by the fact that many of the birds that build hanging nests use it as cement to attach them to the supports from which they are suspended. The Indian white-eye (Zosterops palbebrosa) fixes its tiny oriole-like nest to the supporting branches, not by fibres, but by cobweb. In the same way the yellow-eyed babbler (Pyctorhis sinensis), whose nest is shaped like an inverted cone, attaches this by cobweb to the stems of the crop in which it is situated.

The common honeysucker (Arachnechthra asiatica), whose nest looks like a tangle of dried twigs and other rubbish, uses much cobweb in the construction thereof. The little nursery is suspended by means of cobweb from some projecting branch of a bush, and the various materials which compose it are stuck together with spider’s web; but in this case some sticky resinous substance is usually used in addition to the cobweb.

The tailor-bird (Orthotomous sutorius) always uses cobweb to draw together the edges of the leaf or leaves that compose its nest. Having made a series of punctures along the edges of the leaf to be utilised, it procures some cobweb, and, having attached it to one edge of the leaf, carries the strand across to the other edge and, before attaching it to this, pulls it so tightly as to draw the two edges together. When the nest has taken its final shape the bird strengthens the first attenuated strands of cobweb by adding more cobweb or some threads of cotton.

Many birds which weave their nests plaster the exterior more or less thickly with cobweb so as to add strength to the structure.