Part 15

The yellow-eyed babbler is a sprightly little creature not much larger than a sparrow. Its upper plumage is a rich reddish brown, changing to cinnamon on some of the quill feathers. The chin, throat, cheeks, and breast are as white as snow. The conspicuous orange-yellow eye is set off by a small white eyebrow. The abdomen is cream-coloured. The bill is black and the legs a curious shade of dull yellow. The tail is 3½ inches long, at least the median feathers thereof are; the outer ones are barely two inches in length. This gradation in the size of the caudal feathers is, of course, visible only when the tail is spread during flight. The yellow-eyed babblers that inhabit Ceylon differ from those of the mainland in some unimportant details; hence systematists, with their usual aptitude for species-making, call the former _Pyctorhis nasalis_ to distinguish them. In many parts of India the yellow-eyed babbler is quite a common bird. It is especially addicted to tall grass and hedgerows, and will occasionally enter a garden that is well provided with bushes. It is not so clannish as most of its brethren; sometimes a small party of six or seven feed in company, but more often only solitary birds or pairs are seen. They hop about in and out of small bushes or on the ground, industriously seeking out the small beetles and other insects on which they prey. Every now and then one of these sprightly birds permits itself a little relaxation in the shape of a sweet melody, which it composes and pours forth from the summit of a convenient bush. Its more usual note is described by Jerdon as “a loud sibilant whistle”; it also utters a variety of chattering sounds, which proclaim it a true babbler.

For an Indian bird it is shy; if it sees that it is being watched it quickly disappears into cover.

The nest of this species is a veritable work of art. Its usual form is that of an inverted cone, composed of dried grass, fibres, or other suitable material very compactly and neatly woven, the whole being plastered over exteriorly with cobweb, which, as I have said before, is the cement generally used by bird artisans. The well-built little nursery is sometimes wedged into a forked branch of a tree; more often it will be found snugly tucked away in a bush. In the Punjab the nest is very frequently found attached to the stalks of growing millet, in much the same way as a reed-warbler’s nest is fastened to reeds. The babbler weaves its nest round a couple of adjacent stalks, so that these are worked into its walls. A nest which is thus supported by two stalks is in shape like the cocked hat worn by a political officer.

The eggs, which may be looked for at any time between May and September, are very beautiful. To describe them in a few words is not easy, because they exhibit great diversity in colour and markings. This is one of the hundreds of facts inconsistent with the orthodox theories of the significance of colour in organic nature that confront the field naturalist at every turn. The existence of such facts does not perturb in the least those theorists who “rule the roost” in the scientific world. Their attitude is “our word is law—if facts don’t fit in with it, so much the worse for facts.” As Hume points out, three main types of eggs occur, and there are many combinations of these types. Of the two types most often seen, “one has a pinkish-white ground, thickly and finely mottled and streaked over the whole surface with more or less bright and deep brick-dust red, so that the ground colour only faintly shows through here and there as a sort of pale mottling; in the other type the ground colour is pinkish white somewhat sparingly, but boldly, blotched with irregular patches and eccentric hieroglyphic-like streaks, often bunting-like in their character, of bright blood or brick-dust red.”

XLII THE INDIAN SAND-MARTIN

The Indian sand-martin (_Cotile sinensis_) is, I believe, the smallest of the swallow tribe. So diminutive is he that you could put him in your watch-pocket, were you so minded, without fear of damaging his plumage. His charm lies in his littleness and activity rather than in his colouring, for he belongs not to the dandies. Neat and quiet are the adjectives that describe his attire. The head, shoulders, and back are pale brown tinged with grey. The wing-feathers are dark brown. The under parts are white with a touch of grey on the chin and breast. The sexes dress alike. This description applies equally well to the sand-martin (_Cotile riparia_) that nests in sand-pits in England, for the only differences between this species, which occurs sparingly in India, and the Indian form are that the former is a little larger and possesses a dark necklace.

The feeding habits of sand-martins are those of the rest of the swallow tribe. They live on minute insects which they catch on the wing, not, after the manner of fly-catchers, by making little aerial sallies from a perch, but by careering speedily through the air during the greater part of the day and seizing every insect that they meet.

The Indian sand-martin is a species especially dear to the ornithologist because it nests in winter, when comparatively few other birds are so occupied. Speaking generally, the cold weather may be said to be the “silly season” of the bird world.

There is one drawback to India from the point of view of the ornithologist, and that is the habit of the great majority of birds of building their nests at the time when the sun shines forth pitilessly from a cloudless sky for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, burning up all vegetation and raising the temperature of the air to furnace heat. Under such conditions the pleasure of watching the birds is tempered by the physical discomfort to which the bird-watcher is put. Very pleasant, then, is it, after months of excessive heat, to awake from sleep one morning to find that the cool weather has come at last, to feel the morning air blow fresh against the cheek, and to look out on an earth enveloped in dense mist. Before one’s horse is saddled, the first rays of the sun dissipate the mist with almost magic suddenness, and then one rides forth over dew-bejewelled plains of grass. If on such a morning one repairs to a sand-pit or a river bank, one is likely there to meet with a colony of sand-martins, for it is early in the cold weather that those birds begin to construct their nests, which are holes bored in sand-banks by the birds themselves.

Like the majority of very small birds, sand-martins show but little fear of human beings. Tits, white-eyes, warblers, sand-martins, etc., will come in search of food quite close up to a motionless human being. Mr. W. H. Hudson relates in his _Birds and Man_ how, when one day he went into his garden and walked under the trees, there was a great commotion among the little birds overhead, who mobbed him in the manner they mob an enemy. He discovered that the reason of this strange behaviour on the part of the small birds that usually paid no attention to him, was that he was wearing a striped cloth cap, which the birds appeared to mistake for a cat. It would almost seem that there is so vast a difference in size between a tiny bird and a human being that the former fails to recognise the latter as a living object provided he keeps still. This does not imply poor eyesight on the part of birds. The minds and eyes of birds are almost invariably directed on small things. Now, a man bears to a small bird much the same relation as a horse three hundred hands high would bear to a man. As regards detail, the eyesight of birds is probably superior to that of men, for each sand-martin seems never to mistake its nest, although the entrance to it is merely one of several score of holes scattered irregularly over the face of the cliff. To the human eye these holes look all very much alike, but each must possess minute peculiarities which loom large in the eye of the sand-martin. Whether or not the above explanation is the true one, the fact remains that a human being can take up a position within a few feet of the cliff without disturbing the martins in their nest-building operations.

Some birds, when busy at their nests, work with feverish haste, as though they were under contract to finish them by a given date. Not so the sand-martins. With them, the spells of work at the nest would seem to be mere interludes between their gambols in the air. Each bird appears to visit its nest every few seconds, but generally it contents itself with hovering in front of the hole for a fraction of a minute and then dashes away. Frequently one sees a martin perch at the aperture for a few seconds without doing any work, and then fly off again. For every visit made with the object of doing work, ten or twelve seem to be made for the mere fun of the thing. Sand-martins appear to derive the greatest pleasure from the contemplation of the growing nursery. If the cliff be examined carefully, its soft sandy surface will be found to be scored in many places by marks made by the sharp little claws of the martins as the birds alight.

A colony of nesting martins presents a very animated appearance. The main body dash through the air to and fro in front of the cliff, uttering their feeble twittering, but a few are always at the nest holes, either resting or working. These latter are constantly reinforced from those on the wing, and _vice versa_, so that there are two streams of birds, one flying to the cliff and the other leaving it. Suddenly the whole flock, including both the resting and the flying birds, will, as if affected simultaneously by a common influence, fly off _en masse_ and disappear from sight. But they are never absent for long. At the end of two or three minutes all are back again.

The birds utter unceasingly, when on the wing, a twittering note, not so harsh as that of the sparrow, but sufficiently harsh to make it appear that the birds are squabbling. A certain amount of bickering does take place among the sand-martins. Every now and again a bird may be observed chasing its neighbour in a very unneighbourly manner. Occasionally two will attack one another with open beak, and fall interlocked to the ground. A prettier sight is that of a couple of martins resting side by side at the orifice of the nest hole twittering lovingly to one another. The excavation that leads to the nest is a round passage, less than three inches in diameter. After proceeding inwards and slightly upwards for about two feet, it ends in a globular cavity of larger diameter. This is the nesting chamber, and is lined with grass, fine twigs, feathers, and the like. Two or three white eggs are laid. Sand-martins probably bring up more than one brood in the year. Their nests are likely to be found in all the winter months.

_Cotile sinensis_ is a permanent resident in India and is common in all the northern portions of the country, but is not often seen so far south as Madras. It is curious that this species should be abundant in North India and rare in the south, where insect life is so plentiful. There must be something in the climatic conditions of South India that suits neither this nor the other species of sand-martin. Precisely what this is I cannot conjecture. Birds vary greatly in their adaptability to climate. Some, such as the hoopoe, appear absolutely indifferent to heat or cold, moisture or dryness; others, as most wagtails, shun heat. The two common crows of India afford an excellent illustration of the way in which allied species differ in their power of adapting themselves to variation in climate. The grey-necked species (_Corvus splendens_) is found throughout the length and breadth of the plains of India, but does not ascend the Himalayas to any great height, and is, in consequence, not found in Murree Mussoorie or Naini Tal. The corby (_C. macrorhynchus_), on the other hand, is found in all parts of the plains save in the Punjab, and ascends the Himalayas up to 10,000 feet or higher, and is the only crow that occurs in most of the Himalayan hill stations. It is thus evident that the black species is far less sensitive to cold than the other, but why does it occur so sparingly in the Punjab? The connection between climate and the distribution of birds is a fascinating subject about which very little is known. Possibly in the varying sensitiveness of birds to climatic conditions lies the secret of some of the phenomena of bird migration.

XLIII THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG BIRDS

A certain school of naturalists, in which Americans figure largely, lays great stress on the way in which parent birds and beasts educate their offspring. According to this school, a young bird is, like a human babe, born with its mind a blank, and has to be taught by its parents everything that it is necessary for a bird to know. Just as children study at various educational establishments, so do young animals attend what Mr. W. J. Long calls “the school of the woods.” “After many years of watching animals in their native haunts,” he writes, “I am convinced that instinct conveys a much smaller part than we have supposed; that an animal’s success or failure in the ceaseless struggle for life depends, not upon instinct, but upon the kind of training which the animal receives from its mother.” In short, but for its parents, a young bird would never learn to find its food, to fly, or sing, or build a nest.

This theory appears to have met with wide acceptance, chiefly because it brings animals into line with human beings. It is but natural for us humans to put anthropomorphic interpretations on the actions of animals. Careless observation seems to justify us in so doing. While not denying that birds do spend much time and labour in teaching their young, I am of opinion that the lessons taught by them are comparatively unimportant, that their teachings are merely supplementary to the instinct, the inherited education, which is latent in young birds at birth, and displays itself as they increase in size, just as intelligence develops in growing human beings.

By the mere observation of birds and beasts in their natural state it is not easy to ascertain how far the progress made by young ones is the growth of their inborn instincts, and how far it is the result of parental instruction.

It is the failure to appreciate the magnitude of this difficulty that vitiates the teachings of Mr. Long and the school to which he belongs. We can gauge the value of the pedagogic efforts of parent animals only by actual experiment, by removing young birds from parental influence and noticing how far that which we may term their education progresses in the absence of the mother and father.

The first and foremost of the things which a young bird must know is how to find its food. This is an accomplishment which it speedily acquires without any teaching. Young ducklings hatched under a barndoor hen take to the water of their own accord, and soon discover how to use their sieve-like bills.

I read some time ago a most interesting account of two young American ospreys, which Mr. E. H. Baynes took from the nest at an early age. Having secured them, he placed them in an artificial nest which he had made for them. The parents did not succeed in finding them out, the young birds had therefore to face the struggle for existence without a mentor. “For several days,” writes Mr. Baynes, “they spent most of their time lying still, with necks extended and heads prone on the floor of the nest.” At this stage they were, of course, unable to fly. It was not until they were five or six weeks old that the young ospreys entrusted themselves to their wings, and at the first attempt they, or rather one of them, performed an unbroken flight of several miles! After they had learned to use their wings, the ospreys were allowed full liberty, nevertheless they continued to remain in the neighbourhood of Mr. Baynes’s house, and became quite domesticated. When taken away, they returned like homing pigeons. Even as they had made the discovery that they could fly, so did they, one day, find out that they could catch fish. Mr. Baynes thus describes the earliest attempt of one of the young birds: “His tactics were similar to those employed by old and experienced ospreys, but the execution was clumsy. After sailing over the pond for a few minutes, he evidently caught sight of a fish, for he paused, flapped his wings to steady himself, and then dropped into the water. But it was the attempt of a tyro, and of course the fish escaped. The hawk disappeared, and when he came to the surface he struggled vainly to rise from the water. Then he seemed to give it up.” At this, Mr. Baynes was about to jump into the water in order to rescue him; however, “the next moment he made a mighty effort, arose dripping wet, and flew to his old roost on the chimney, where he flapped his wings and spread them out to dry in the sun.” Far from being deterred by this experience, he repeated the operation, and ere long became an expert fisher.

According to the school to which Mr. Long belongs, young birds learn their song from their parents, just as young children learn how to talk. In the words of Barrington, “Notes in birds are no more innate than language is in man, but depend entirely upon the master under which they are bred, as far as their organs will enable them to imitate the sounds which they have frequent opportunities of hearing.”

Similarly Michelet writes: “Nothing is more complex than the education of certain singing birds. The perseverance of the father, the docility of the young, are worthy of all admiration.” There can be no doubt that young birds are very imitative. The young of the koel—an Indian parasitic cuckoo—make ludicrous attempts to caw in imitation of the notes of their corvine foster-parents; but later, when the spring comes, they pour forth the very different notes of their species. In the same way the young of the common cuckoo, no matter by what species they are reared, all cry “cuckoo” when they come of age. Ducklings, pheasants, and partridges, hatched under the domestic hen, and fowls reared by turkeys, have the calls peculiar to their species. It may, of course, be urged that these learn their cries from others of their own kind. Here again, then, actual experiment is necessary to determine which view is correct. Such experiments were performed by Mr. John Blackwall as long ago as 1823. He writes:—

“I placed the eggs of a redbreast in the nest of a chaffinch, and removed the eggs of the chaffinch to that of the redbreast, conceiving that, if I was fortunate in rearing the young, I should, by this exchange, ensure an unexceptional experiment, the result of which must be deemed perfectly conclusive by all parties. In process of time these eggs were hatched, and I had the satisfaction to find that the young birds had their appropriate chirps.

“When ten days old they were taken from their nests, and were brought up by hand, immediately under my own inspection, especial care being taken to remove them to a distance from whatever was likely to influence their notes. At this period an unfortunate circumstance, which it is needless to relate, destroyed all these birds except two (a fine cock redbreast and a hen chaffinch), which, at the expiration of twenty-one days from the time they were hatched, commenced the calls peculiar to their species. This was an important point gained, as it evidently proved that the calls of birds, at least, are instinctive, and that, at this early age, ten days are not sufficient to enable nestlings to acquire even the calls of those under which they are bred. . . . Shortly after, the redbreast began to record (i.e. to attempt to sing), but in so low a tone that it was scarcely possible to trace the rudiments of its future song in those early attempts. As it gained strength and confidence, however, its native notes became very apparent, and they continued to improve in tone till the termination of July, when it commenced moulting. . . . By the beginning of October . . . it began to execute its song in a manner calculated to remove every doubt as to its being that of the redbreast, had any such previously existed.” Mr. Long lays great stress on the manner in which parents inculcate into their young fear of enemies. Fear, he asserts, is not instinctive; young creatures, if found before they have been taught to fear, are not alarmed at the sight of man. I admit that very young creatures are not afraid of foes, and that, later, they do display fear, but I assert that this change is not the result of teaching, that it is the mere development of an inborn instinct which does not show itself until the young are some days old, because there is no necessity for it in the earliest stages of the existence of a young bird.

“Some months ago one of my _chaprassis_ brought me a couple of baby red-vented bulbuls which had fallen out of a nest. They were unable to feed themselves, and were probably less than a week old. One met with an early death, and the survivor was kept in a cage. One day, while I was writing in my study, this young bulbul began scolding in a way that all bulbuls do when alarmed. On looking round, I discovered that a _chaprassi_ had silently entered the room with a shikra on his wrist. The shikra is a kind of sparrow-hawk, common in India. That particular individual was being trained to fly at quail. It had never before been brought to my bungalow, nor is it likely that the captive bulbul, whose cage was placed in a small, enclosed verandah, had ever set eyes upon a shikra. It had left the nest before it was of an age at which it could learn anything from its parents. Its display of fear and its alarm-call were purely instinctive. Its inherited memory must have caused it to behave as it did. Speaking figuratively, its ancestors learned by experience that the shikra is a dangerous bird—a bird to be feared—and this experience has been inherited. To express the matter in more exact language, this inherited fear of the shikra is the product of natural selection. For generations those bulbuls who did not fear and avoid the shikra fell victims to it, while the more cautious ones survived and their descendants inherited this characteristic.

“Of all the arts practised by birds none is so wonderful as that of nest-building. If it can be demonstrated (as I believe it can) that this art is innate in a bird, then there is no difficulty in believing that all the other arts practised by the feathered folk are innate.

“Michelet boldly asserts that a bird has to learn how to build a nest precisely as a schoolboy has to learn arithmetic or algebra. By way of proof, he quotes the case of his canary—Jonquille. “It must be stated at the outset,” he writes, “that Jonquille was born in a cage, and had not seen how nests were made. As soon as I saw her disturbed, and became aware of her approaching maternity, I frequently opened her door and allowed her freedom to collect in the room the materials of the bed the little one would stand in need of. She gathered them up, indeed, but without knowing how to employ them. She put them together and stored them in a corner of the cage. . . . I gave her the nest ready made—at least, the little basket that forms the framework of the walls of the structure. Then she made the mattress and felted the interior coating, but in a very indifferent manner.”