Part 3

“Of chick and duck and gosling gone astray, All falling preys to the sweeping kite.”

King says:

“The kite will to her carrion fly.”

The most captious critic could not take exception to any of these sentiments. He might certainly pull a long face at Macaulay’s

“The kites know well the long stern swell That bids the Roman close.”

But he would find it exceedingly difficult to prove that the kites do not know this.

But let us leave the poets and return to the bird as it is, for common though he be in the East, the “sailing glead” is a bird that will repay a little study. His powers of flight, his ability to soar high above the earth, to sail through the thin air with outstretched and apparently motionless wings, are equalled by few birds. Watch him as he glides overhead in great circles until he disappears from sight. He constantly utters his tremulous, querulous scream—Chēē-hēē-hēē-hēē-hēē; his head is bent so that his beak points downwards, and few things are there which escape his keen eye. Suddenly he espies a rabble of crows squabbling over a piece of meat. Quick as thought he is full on his downward career. A second or two later the fighting, squawking crows hear the swish of his wings—a sound very familiar to them—and promptly make way for him. None desires to feel the grip of his powerful talons. He sweeps above the bone of contention, drops a little, seizes it with his claws, and sails away to the nearest housetop, where he devours his booty, fixing it with his talons as he tears it with his beak.

Crows love not the kite. His manner of living resembles theirs so closely that a certain amount of opposition is inevitable. Then, again, the kite never makes any bones about carrying off a young crow if the opportunity presents itself. If the truth be told, the crows are afraid of the kite. They will, of course, not admit this. You will never get a crow to admit anything that may be used as evidence against him.

The crows regard kites with much the same feelings that the smaller boys at school regard the big, bullying boys. Those who know the ways of the corvi (and who is there in India that does not?) will not be surprised to hear that they never lose an opportunity of scoring off a kite. There is no commoner sight than that of a brace of them, as likely as not aided and abetted by a king crow, chasing the fleeing glead, and endeavouring to pull a beakful of feathers out of his rump.

But crows prefer to worry the kite upon terra firma, for the latter is a clumsy bird when on the ground. He is so heavy that he can only waddle along, and, notwithstanding his great pinions, he experiences difficulty in raising himself off a level plain. Hence it is when a kite is resting, half asleep, upon the ground, that the “lurking villain crows” usually worry him. It requires at least two of the “treble-dated birds” to do this with success. One alights in front of the victim and the other behind him. This apparently harmless manœuvre is quite sufficient to excite the suspicions of the kite. He turns his eyes uneasily from crow to crow, and, although he utters no sound, he is probably cursing his luck that he has not a visual organ at the back of his head. If he is a sensible bird he will at once fly off, in hopes that the perditious crows will not follow him. If he remains, the posteriorly situated crow takes a peck at his tail. He, of course, turns upon the aggressor, and thus gives the front bird the opportunity for which it has been waiting. Sooner or later the kite has to move on.

Kites are very fond of settling on the tops of posts, and on other spiky places; this feature they share with crows, green parrots, blue jays, and other birds. I cannot bring myself to believe that such perches are comfortable; but, just as a small boy will prefer balancing himself upon a narrow railing to sitting on a proper seat, so do birds seem to enjoy perching on all sorts of impossible places. Birds are like small boys in many respects. A kite, of course, enjoys one great advantage when he elects to rest upon such a perch: it is then impossible for “ribald” crows to come and squat to right and to left of him.

Kites are not migratory birds in most parts of India. It is said, however, that the kites leave Calcutta during the rains. I have never visited the “Queen of Indian cities,” so I cannot say whether or not the kites act thus. Jerdon, Blanford, and Cunningham all declare that they do; but Finn writes: “How such an idea could have arisen I do not know. I have always noticed kites in the rains, and have never heard that they were ever in the habit of leaving Calcutta then.” The truth of the matter seems to be that when it rains very heavily the streets of the city on the Hooghly are washed comparatively clean, and all the food of the “sailing glead” is swept out into the country, so the kites go after it, but they return as soon as the rain stops.

The nesting season for the kites is at any time when they feel disposed to undertake the cares of the family. The books tell us that it begins in January. This is correct. Where they go wrong is in asserting that it ends in April. I should rather say that it ends in December. It is true, however, that in Northern India the greater number of nests are constructed in the first three months of the calendar year.

The completed nest is about the size of a football, and is an untidy mass of twigs, rags, mud, brickbats, and such-like things. It is usually placed high up in a tall tree, not quite at the top, on a forked branch. It is not a great architectural triumph, but it serves its purpose. Two eggs are usually laid. These have a white ground blotched with red or brown. Kites object to having their nest pried into, so that he who attempts to steal the eggs must not be surprised if the owners attack him.

V INDIAN WAGTAILS

“What art thou made of?—air or light or dew? —I have no time to tell you if I knew. My tail—ask that—perhaps may solve the matter; I’ve missed three flies already by this chatter.”

I quite agree with Mr. Warde Fowler that wagtails are everything that birds should be. They are just the right size; their shape and form are perfect; they dress most tastefully; they display that sprightliness that one looks for in birds; their movements are elegant and engaging; their undulating flight is blithe and gay; their song is sweet and cheery; they are friendly, and sociable, fond of men and animals, “not too shy, not too bold.” They are, in short, ideal birds.

I know of nothing more enjoyable than to sit watching a wagtail feeding at the water’s edge.

“She runs along the shore so quickly,” writes a long-forgotten author, “that the eye is hardly able to follow her steps, and yet, with a flying glance, she examines every crevice, every stalk that conceals her reposing or creeping prey. Now she steps upon a smoothly washed stone; she bathes and drinks—and how becomingly, and with what an air! The very nicest soubrette could not raise her dress more coquettishly, the best-taught dancer not move with more graceful pas than the pretty bather as she lifts her train and dainty feet. Suddenly she throws herself, with a jump and a bound, into the air, to catch the circling gnat; and now should be seen the beating of wings, the darting hither and thither, the balancing and the shakes and the allegretto that her tail keeps time to. Nothing can surpass it in lightness. In fine, of all the little feathered people, none, except the swallow, is more graceful, fuller of movement, more adroit or insinuating, than the wagtail.”

Wagtails are essentially birds of the temperate zone. They remind us of a fact that we who dwell in the tropics are apt to forget, namely, that there are some beautiful birds found outside the torrid zone.

Fourteen species of wagtail occur in India, but the majority of them leave us to breed. They bring up their families in cool Kashmir, on the chilly, wind-swept heights of Thibet, or even in glacial Siberia, and visit India only in the winter when their native land becomes too frigid even for them.

Many of the migratory wagtails do not show themselves in the southern portion of the peninsula, being rightly of opinion that the climate of Upper India is not far from perfect during the winter months.

There is, however, one species—the most lovable of them all—the pied-wagtail (Motacilla maderaspatensis)—which has discovered that it is possible to live in the plains of India throughout the year; and, having made this discovery, it has decided that the troubles and trials of the hot weather are lesser evils than the inconveniences and perils of the long migratory journey. The head of this species is black, relieved by a white streak running through the eye; the wings and tail are mostly black, and a bib—or is “front” a more correct word?—of similar hue is usually worn. The under parts of the bird are white.

The pied-wagtail is common all over India. It is particularly abundant in the city of Madras, where it is to be seen everywhere—on the house-top, in the courtyard, in shady garden, in open field, and on the river bank in company with the soldiers who solemnly fish in the waters round about the fort.

When in Madras I used to see almost daily one of these birds perched on the telegraph wire that runs across the Cooum parallel with the Mount Road bridge. The bird seemed to spend most of the day in pouring forth its sweet song. When sitting on the wire its tail used to hang down in a most unwagtail-like manner, so that the bird looked rather like a pipit. Pied-wagtails sometimes appropriate suitable parts of the bungalow for nesting sites; when this happens the human occupant has plenty of opportunity of studying their ways.

The remaining thirteen species of wagtails are merely winter visitors to the plains of India. Two or three of these are to be seen feeding, during the cold weather, on every grass-covered field, and at the edge of every jhil. In the latter place wagtails are nothing short of a nuisance to the man who is out after snipe, for they have the habit of rising along with the snipe, and the white outer-tail feathers invariably catch the eye. Many a snipe owes its life to the wagtail.

The four commonest of the migratory wagtails are, I think, the white (Motacilla alba), the masked (M. impersonata), the grey (M. melanope), and the grey-headed wagtail (M. borealis). The two latter are characterised by much bright yellow in the lower plumage, which the first two lack; but I am not going to attempt to achieve the impossible by trying to describe the various species of wagtail. Owing to the fact that these birds, like ladies of fashion, are continually changing their gowns, it is very difficult to state the species to which an individual belongs without examining that individual feather by feather. You may see a dozen wagtails of the same species catching insects on your lawn, each of which differs markedly from all his companions. Most of us are satisfied with the knowledge that a given bird is a wagtail, and are able to enjoy the poetry and grace of its motion without troubling our heads about its scientific name.

VI THE TEESA