Part 7

But his splendour is not without alloy. It is marred by the tiny, black, beady eye, which gives the bird an evil-tempered, sinister expression. This expression is in keeping with the character of the swan. Cygnus is a bully. He delights to tyrannise over the ducks who so often keep him company in captivity. The domineering behaviour of an old swan that used to live in the Zoological Gardens at Lahore was amusing to watch. The water-fowl are fed twice daily, the food being placed in a series of dishes so that all can eat at once. The swan used to appropriate the first dish to be filled, and no duck or goose durst approach that dish. Having taken the edge off his appetite, the swan would waddle to the next plate, and drive away the ducks that were eating out of it. He would then pass on to dish number three, and so on all along the line, his idea being, apparently, to cause the maximum of annoyance to his neighbours with the minimum of trouble to himself. There were great rejoicings among the ducks when that old swan died.

An angry swan is capable of inflicting a nasty blow with its powerful wings. It is said to be able to use these with such force as to break a man’s arm. Mr. Kay Robinson denies this, and declares that the wing of a swan is not a formidable weapon. Personally, I always give the wing the benefit of the doubt and an angry swan a wide berth.

Considering its size, the swan has a very small brain; hence it is not overburdened with intelligence. Mr. H. E. Watson relates how one day when shooting in Sind he came across five swans on a tank. “They let the boat get pretty close,” he writes, “and I shot one. The other four flew round the tank a few times and then settled on it again. I went up in the boat and fired again, but without effect. They flew round, and then settled again. The third time I shot another; the three remaining again flew round and settled, and the fourth time I fired I did not kill. Exactly the same thing happened the fifth time; the birds flew round and round, and settled close to me, and I shot a third. The remaining two flew a little distance, and settled, but I thought it would be a pity to kill them . . . so I began to shoot ducks, and then the two remaining swans flew by me, one on the right and one on the left, so that I could easily have knocked them over with small shot.” What a pity swans are such rare visitors to India! What grand birds they must be for an indifferent shot. One swan on a small _jhil_ would give a really bad gunner a whole morning’s shooting; it would circle round and round the sportsman at short range, letting him blaze off to his heart’s content until it fell a victim to its trustfulness! Try to imagine the so-called stupid goose behaving in this manner.

The swan is a very silent bird in captivity, for this reason it is called the mute swan. The only noise I have ever heard it make is a hiss when it is angry. At the breeding season it is said to trumpet sometimes. The ancients believed that the swan, though mute throughout life, sings most sublimely at the approach of death; it then sings, not a funeral dirge, but a jolly, rollicking song. This presented an excellent opportunity for moralising. Mediæval authors were always on the look out for such opportunities. The swan, wrote the author of the _Speculum Mundi_, “is a perfect emblem and pattern to us, that our death ought to be cheerful, and life not so dear to us as it is.” This practice of singing before death has, like the crinoline, quite gone out of fashion. The mute swan can never have been so great a musician as some of his brethren, since the French horn which he carries in his breast-bone is not nearly so well developed as it is in either the hooper or the black swan. Let me here say, _en passant_, that both ancient and mediæval writers declined to believe in the existence of a black swan; they regarded it as “the very emblem and type of extravagant impossibility.” The phœnix, the dragon, and the mermaid they could believe, but they felt that they must really draw the line at a black swan.

A swan’s nest is a bulky structure composed of rushes, reeds, and other aquatic plants; it is placed on the ground near the water’s edge. Six or seven large greenish-white eggs are laid. The breeding season is from March to May. Swans do not, of course, breed in India. Indeed, it is only on rare occasions that they visit that country, and then they do not venture farther south than Sind.

XIX KITES OF THE SEA

“Graceful seagulls, plumed in snowy white, Follow’d the creaming furrow of the prow, With easy pinion, pleasurably slow; Then on the waters floated like a fleet Of tiny vessels, argosies complete, Such as brave Gulliver, deep wading, drew Victorious from the forts of Blefuscu.”

Of all the methods of obtaining food to which birds resort, none makes greater demands on their physical powers than that which we human beings term scavenging—the seeking-out and devouring of the multifarious edible objects left, unclaimed by the owners, on the face of the land or the sea. No bird can eke out an existence by scavenging unless it be endowed with wonderful power of flight, the keenest eyesight, and limitless energy, to say nothing of the ability and the will to fight when necessity arises. Thus it happens that it is to the despised scavengers that we must direct our eyes if we would behold the perfection of flight. The vultures, the kites, and the gulls are verily the monarchs of the atmosphere.

Bird scavengers are of two kinds—specialists and general practitioners. The former confine themselves to one particular kind of food—the bodies of dead animals. Of such are the vultures. In the polity of the feathered folk might is right, so that these great birds enjoy the prerogative of picking and choosing their food. The lesser fry have to be content with that which the vultures do not require, with the crumbs that fall from the vulturine table; they are ready to devour “anything that is going.” All is grist that comes to their mill.

The kites and gulls are the chieftains of the clan of general scavengers. The sway of the former extends over the land: the latter have dominion over the seas. Kites cannot swim; their operations are in consequence necessarily confined to the land, and to water in the neighbourhood of _terra firma_. Sea-gulls, on the other hand, are as buoyant as corks, and have webbed feet; they are, further, no mean swimmers, and are eminently adapted to a seafaring life. They are birds of powerful flight, and almost as much at home on land as at sea. They confine their attention mainly to the sea, not because they are compelled by their structure to do so, but because they encounter less opposition there.

Among birds, similarity in feeding habits often engenders similarity in appearance—a professional likeness grows up among those that pursue the same calling. The likeness between swifts and swallows is a remarkable instance of this. The separate sphere of influence occupied by kites and gulls sufficiently explains the dissimilitude of their plumage. In nearly all other respects the birds closely resemble one another. In habits, gulls are marine kites. Grandeur of flight is the most marked attribute of each. They do not cleave the air at great velocity, like swifts or “green parrots.” It is the effortlessness, the perfect ease with which kites and sea-gulls perform their aerial movements for hours at a time, rather than phenomenal speed, that compels our admiration. A dozen gentle flaps of the wings in a minute suffices to enable a gull to keep pace with a fast steamship.

Cowper sang of—

“Kites that swim sublime In the still repeated circles, screaming loud.”

These words are equally appropriate to the kites of the sea.

I have watched, until my eyes grew tired, kites floating in circles in the thin atmosphere, with scarce a movement of the pinions; I have seen gulls keeping pace with a steamer without as much as a quiver of their wings. In each case the wind was the motive power.

Both kites and gulls fly with downwardly directed eyes. Their life is one long search for food. So keen is their vision that no object seems minute enough to escape their notice. The smallest piece of bread thrown from a moving ship is immediately pounced upon by the “wild sea-birds that follow through the air,” but no notice appears to be taken of a piece of paper rolled up into a ball.

Gulls, like kites, are omnivorous. Some species occasionally prey upon fish which they catch alive; this method of obtaining food is, however, the exception rather than the rule among gulls. They are sea-birds merely in the sense that they usually pick their food off water. They are found only where there is refuse to be picked up. In those parts of the ocean that are not frequented by ships gulls are conspicuous by their absence. They do not, as a rule, travel very far from land; when they do venture out to sea, it is invariably in the wake of some great ship. Every ocean liner sheds edible objects all along its course, and so attracts numbers of gulls. These follow the ship for perhaps two hundred miles, and then forsake it to return with some homeward-bound vessel.

The seashore and the estuaries of tidal rivers are the favourite hunting-grounds of the sea-gulls, the flotsam of the rivers and the jetsam of the waves being the attractions. Numbers of the graceful birds await the return of the fishing smacks, in order to secure the fish thrown away by the fishermen. The marine kites are not always content to wait for rejected fish; not infrequently they boldly help themselves to some of the shining contents of the nets, and sometimes actually tear the meshes with their strong sharp bills. In India there is always much fighting between the gulls and the crows over the fish cast away by the fishers. The antagonists are well matched. Similar contests have been recorded in the British Isles. I cull from _The Evening Telegraph_ the following description of a fight between gulls and rooks over ground covered with worms which had been killed by a salt-water flood: “Thousands of gulls and rooks fought each other with a determination and venom that could not be appreciated unless witnessed. Feathers flew in all directions; the cawing and screaming were almost deafening. It was a genuine fight. At first it took place in mid-air, but soon the combatants came to the ground, and then the struggle centred in and around a fairly large hillock. Just as the gulls appeared to be gaining the upper hand, the report of a gun broke up the fight.”

The diet of the kites of the sea is not confined to small things. “A son of the marshes” states that he has seen them feeding with hooded crows on the carcases of moorland sheep. In the British Isles gulls frequently follow the plough and greedily seize the worms and grubs turned up in the furrow. In London and Dublin, and probably in other places, gulls have taken up their residence in the parks, where they feed largely on the bread thrown to the ornamental water-fowl, seizing it in the air before it reaches the ducks. So tame do these gulls become that they will almost take bread from the hands of children. Many people labour under the delusion that these gulls are domesticated ones kept by the authorities along with the ducks and swans.

Of late years a large colony of gulls has established itself on the Thames opposite the Temple. These now form one of the sights of London. The townsfolk take so much interest in the graceful birds that some individuals earn a living by selling on the Embankment small baskets of little fish which passers-by purchase in order to throw to the screaming gulls that hover around expectantly.

Even as hunger frequently drives kites to commit larceny in the farmyard, so does it sometimes turn sea-gulls into birds of prey.

Mr. W. J. Williams gives an account, in _The Irish Naturalist_, of a lesser black-headed gull that used to frequent the lake in St. Stephen’s Green Park. It was wont to rest on the cornice of a house overlooking the park, till an opportunity presented itself of swooping down and snatching a duckling. It became so expert at this form of poaching that the Board of Works had the marauder executed. Another gull which attacked a duckling was in turn attacked by the parents (a pair of Chilian wigeons), with such success that the exhausted gull was killed with a stick by one of the Park constables.

In India gulls do not, I think, venture far inland. The terns regard the inland waters of Hindustan as their preserve. Some people eat gulls. The late Lord Lilford declared that the black-headed species is a good bird for the table. I am not prepared to deny this assertion. I shall not put it to the test, for, in my opinion, gulls should be a feast only for the eyes.

XX RIVER TERNS

A sojourn of a few years in Upper India usually teaches a European to make the most of the cold weather as it gives place to the heat of summer. There is a period of a week or two in March and early April when, although the days are very hot, the nights and early mornings are cool, when the mercury in the thermometer fluctuates between 104° and 68° F. If at this season a man is energetic enough to rise at 5.15, shortly after the birds awake, there are few more pleasant ways of spending the ensuing three hours than by taking what the French would term a promenade upon the water. The gliding motion of a boat propelled by sail or oar is always soothing, and is doubly so when one knows that the breeze which then blows cool upon the cheek will scorch the face seven hours hence. The morning excursion on the water is rendered especially enjoyable if it happens to take place at one of the comparatively few parts of the Ganges or the Jumna where the river-bed is narrow, so that the water fills the space between the banks, instead of being, as is more usually the case, a mere trickle of water meandering through a great expanse of sand. Under the former conditions it is good to sit in the stern of a gliding boat and watch the birds that frequent the river.

At sunrise the crow-pheasants (_Centropus rufipennis_) come to the water’s edge to drink, so that numbers of the long-tailed, black birds with chestnut wings are to be seen from the boat. Having slaked their thirst, they hop up the steep bank with considerable dexterity, to disappear into the stunted bushes that grow on the top of the bank. Then there are, of course, the regular _habitués_ of the water’s edge—the birds that frequent it at all hours of the day—the ubiquitous paddy bird (_Ardeola grayii_), which spends the greater part of its life ankle-deep in water, waiting motionless for the coming of its prey; the common sandpiper (_Totanus hypoleucus_), that solitary bird, as small as a starling, which, on the approach of a human being, emits a plaintive cry and flies away, displaying pointed wings along the length of which runs a narrow white bar; the handsome spur-winged plover (_Hoplopterus ventralis_), whose call is very like that of the did-he-do-it—but we must not dwell on these littoral birds, for to-day I would write of terns, the river birds _par excellence_. None of God’s creatures are more attractive than terns to those who love beauty. That few, if any, of our English poets have sung the praises of these beautiful birds surely demonstrates how little attention poets pay to nature, and how artificial are their writings. This will, I fear, annoy the friends of the poets. I am sorry, but I cannot help it. It is the fault of the bards for having so grossly neglected the terns.

In colouring, these superb birds show what endless possibilities are open to the artist who confines himself to black and white and their combinations.

There is in the flight of terns a poetry of motion over which no one with an eye for the beautiful can fail to wax enthusiastic. The popular name for terns—sea-swallows—is a tribute to their wing power. They are all designed upon a common plan. Length and slimness characterise every part of their anatomy, save the legs, which are very short. Terns rarely walk; nearly all their movements are aerial.

The terns that commonly frequent the rivers of Upper India are of three species—the black-bellied tern (_Sterna melanogaster_), the Indian river tern (_S. seena_) with its deeply forked tail, and the whiskered tern (_Hydrochelidon hybrida_), a study in pale grey. These, when not resting on a sandbank, are dashing through the air without effort, ever and anon dropping on to the water to pick something from off the surface, or plunging in after a fish. Allied to the terns, and found along with them, are the Indian skimmers (_Rynchope albicollis_), easily recognised by their larger size and black wings.

The passing of a black crow causes some of the terns to desist from their piscatorial occupation, in order to mob the intruder. This means that there are terns’ eggs or young ones in the vicinity. Many species of birds betray the presence of their nests by displaying unusual pugnacity at the breeding season. To discover the eggs or young of the terns is not a difficult matter. It is only necessary to land upon the nearest island between which and the river bank there is a sufficient depth of water to prevent jackals fording it. If the island contain eggs or young ones, the parent birds will make a hostile demonstration by collecting overhead and flying backwards and forwards, uttering their harsh cries, and the nearer one approaches the nest the more clamorous do they become. In this manner they unwittingly inform the nest-seeker whether he is getting “hot” or “cold,” to use the expressions employed in a nursery game.

The terns which breed on islets in Indian rivers do not appear to do much incubating in the daytime. There is no need for them to do so, because the sand grows very warm under the rays of the sun. Moreover, the only foes to be feared are the crows and the kites, which the terns can keep at bay more effectually when on the wing than while sitting on the eggs. Very different is the behaviour of the sea terns, whose eggs are liable to attack by gulls and crabs. For safety’s sake the sea terns lay in large colonies, and, to use Colonel Butler’s expression, sit on their eggs “packed together as close as possible without, perhaps, actually touching one another.” He once came upon the nests of a colony of large-crested terns (_Sterna bergii_). The sitting birds did not leave their eggs until he was within a few yards of them. Having put them up, he retired to a little distance. “No sooner had I done so,” he writes, “than both species [i.e. the gulls and terns] began to descend in dozens to the spot where the eggs were lying. In a moment a general fight commenced, and it was at once evident that the eggs belonged to _Sterna bergii_, and that the gulls were carrying them off and swallowing their contents as fast as they could devour them.” River terns do not construct any nest. They deposit their eggs on the bare, dry sand. The eggs have a stone-coloured ground, sometimes suffused with pink, blotched with dark patches, those at the surface of the shell having a sepia hue, and those deeper down appearing dark greyish mauve. The eggs, although not conspicuous, may, without difficulty, be detected when lying on the sand. Their colouring would seem to be adapted to match a stony, rather than a sandy environment, but the fact that the colouring of the eggs is but imperfectly protective does not much matter when the latter lie on a sand island, to which but few predaceous creatures have access; the watchfulness of the parent birds more than compensates for the comparative conspicuousness of the eggs.

Young terns, like most other birds, are born helpless, and are then covered with a greyish down; but before the tail feathers have broken through their sheaths, and while the wing feathers are quite rudimentary, the ternlets learn to run about and swim upon the water. At this stage the little terns look like ducklings when on the water, and, as they run along the water’s edge, may easily be mistaken, at a little distance, for sandpipers.

When a young tern is surprised by some enemy, his natural instinct is to crouch down, half buried in the sand, and to remain there quite motionless until the danger has passed. The colouring of his down is such as to cause him to assimilate more closely to the sandy environment than the eggs do. If one picks up such a crouching ternlet, the bird will probably not struggle at all; it may, perhaps, peck at one’s fingers, but in nine cases out of ten will remain limp and motionless in the hand, looking as though it were dead, and if it be set upon the ground it falls all of a heap, and remains motionless in the position it assumed when dropped. If you take a young tern in your hand and lay it upon its back on the sand it makes no attempt to right itself, but remains motionless in that attitude, looking for all the world like a trussed chicken; but if you turn your back upon it, it will take to its little legs and run, with considerable speed, to the water, to which it takes just as a duck does, its feet being webbed at all stages of its existence.

XXI GREEN BULBULS

Since green is a splendid protective colour for an arboreal creature, it is surprising that there are not more green animals in existence. The truth of the matter is that green seems to be a difficult colour to acquire. There does not exist a really green mammal; while green birds are relatively few and far between. In India we have, it is true, the green parrots, the barbets, the green pigeons, the green bulbuls, and the bee-eaters. Take away these and you can count the remaining green birds on the fingers of your hands. Curiously enough, the bee-eaters spend very little time in trees; consequently the beautiful leaf-green livery seems rather wasted on them. And of the other green birds we may almost say that they are precisely those that seem least in need of this form of protection. The parrakeets and barbets, thanks to their powerful beaks, are well adapted to fighting, while more pugnacious birds than bulbuls and pigeons do not exist. I think, therefore, that the green liveries of these birds are not the result of their necessity for protection from raptorial foes. This livery is a luxury rather than a necessity.

Anatomically speaking, green bulbuls are not bulbuls at all. Jerdon called them bulbuls because of their bulbul-like habits, although, as “Eha” points out, they take more after the orioles. Oates tells us that these beautiful birds are glorified babblers, rich relations of the disreputable-looking seven sisters. He gives them the name _Chloropsis_.

Seven species of green bulbul are found in India; they thus furnish an excellent example of a bird dividing up into a number of local races. When the various portions of a species become separated from one another this phenomenon often occurs. The common grey parrot of Africa is, according to Sir Harry Johnston, even now splitting up into a number of local races. That interesting bird is presenting us with an example of evolution while you wait. It is quite likely that the process may continue until several distinct species are formed. We must bear in mind that there is no essential difference between a species and a race. When the differences between two birds are slight we speak of the latter as forming two races; when the divergence becomes more marked we call them species. Very often systematists are divided as to whether two allied forms are separate species or mere races. In such cases some peacemakers split the difference and call them sub-species.