XVIII
THE SWAN

When I speak of “the swan,” I mean the bird called by ornithologists the mute swan (Cygnus olor), the swan of the poets that warbles sublime and enchanting music when it is about to shuffle off its mortal coil, the tame swan of Europe, the swan that used to take Siegfried for cheap trips down the river, the swan that “graces the brook,” the swan of the “stately homes of England,” the swan I used to feed as a youngster on the Serpentine, not the black fellow in St. James’s Park, the swan that hovers expectantly in the offing while you are having tea in a boat on the Thames. This is, of course, by no means the only species of swan. There are plenty of others—white ones, black ones, black-and-white ones—for the family enjoys a wide distribution. Nevertheless, I propose to confine myself to this particular swan. I have excellent reasons for doing so. As it is the only swan with which I have had much to do, I can, like the Cambridge Don who declared that the Kaiser was quite the pleasantest Emperor he had ever met, say that Cygnus olor is the most agreeable of my swan acquaintances. This may sound like flattery, like the fulsome praise of the penny-a-line puffer. It is nothing of the kind. It is barely complimentary. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, unless, of course, he lives in a republic. “You are the best of a very bad lot,” were the encouraging words with which a prize for arithmetic was once handed to me. The mute swan is the most agreeable of a bad-tempered clan.

Swans are overrated birds. They cannot hold a candle to their despised cousins, the geese. I am sorry to have to say this, to thus shatter another idol of the poets, to expose yet another of what the Babu would call their “bull cock” stories. I am the more sorry as I am fully aware that this will bring down upon me the thunderous wrath of the literary critic, whose devotion to the British bards is truly affecting. Let me, therefore, by way of trimming, say that there is some justification for idolising the swan. The bird is as beautiful as the heroine in a three-volume novel. He is dignified and stately, full of “placid beauty.” “Proudly and slow he swims through the lake in the evening stillness. No leaf, no wave, is moving: the swan alone goes on his solitary course, floating silently like a bright water spirit. How dazzlingly his snowy whiteness shines! How majestically the undulating neck rises and bends! With what lightness and freedom he glides buoyantly away, the pinions unfurled like sails! Each outline melts into the other; every attitude is full of feeling, in every movement is nobility: an ever-changing play of graceful lines, as though he knew that the very stream tarried to contemplate his beauty.”

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

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—

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.

Green bulbuls are essentially arboreal birds. In the olden time when India was densely wooded I believe that there was but one species of Chloropsis, even as there is but one species of house-crow in India proper. Then, as the land began to be denuded of forest in parts, these green bulbuls became a number of isolated communities, with the result that they eventually evolved into several species. In this connection I may mention that the grey on the neck of Corvus splendens is much more marked in birds from the Punjab than in those that worry the inhabitants of Madras.

Of the green bulbuls only two species occur in South India—the Malabar Chloropsis (C. malabarica) and Jerdon’s Chloropsis (C. Jerdoni). The former, as its name tells us, is found in Malabar. The green bulbul of the other parts of South India is Jerdon’s form. This handsome bird does not occur in or about the City of Madras; at least I have never seen it in the neighbourhood, nor indeed nearer than Yercaud. However, not improbably it occurs between the Shevaroys and the east coast. If anyone who reads these lines has seen this bird in that area, I hope that he or she will be kind enough to let me know. Here let me say that to identify a green bulbul is as easy as falling out of a tree. He is of the same size as the common bulbul. His prevailing hue is a rich bright grass-green—the green of grass at its best. His chin and throat are black, and he has a hyacinth-blue moustache, so that he deserves his Telugu name—the “Ornament of the Forest.” His wife is pale green where he is black and her moustache is of a paler blue. The Malabar species is easily distinguished by its bright orange forehead. Green bulbuls go about, sometimes in small flocks, more frequently in pairs. They rarely, if ever, descend to the ground, but flit about amid the foliage, to which they assimilate so closely, seeking for the insects, fruit, and seed on which they feed. Like many other gaily attired birds, they give the lie to the oft-repeated assertion that it is only the dull-hued birds that are good songsters. Green bulbuls are veritable gramophones, “flagrant plagiarists” Mr. W. H. Hudson would call them. Not only have they a number of pretty notes of their own, but the feathered creature whose song they cannot imitate remains yet to be discovered. Green bulbuls might be called Indian mocking-birds were there not so many other birds in the country that imitate the calls of their fellows. Some ornithologist with a good ear for music should draw up a list of all our Indian birds that mock the calls of others, setting against each the names of these whose sounds they imitate.

Green bulbuls are hardy birds and thrive well in captivity. I saw recently a specimen in splendid condition at a bird show in London. “There is one drawback, however,” writes Finn in his Garden and Aviary Birds of India, “to this lovely bird (from a fancier’s point of view), and that is its very savage temper in some cases. In the wild state Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker has seen two of these birds fight to death, and another couple defy law and order by hustling a king-crow, of all birds. And in confinement it is difficult to get two to live together; while some specimens are perfectly impossible companions for other small birds, savagely driving them about and not allowing them to feed. Many individuals, however, are quite peaceable with other birds, and a true pair will live together in harmony.”

There is nothing remarkable in the nest of the Chloropsis; it is a shallow cup, devoid of lining, placed fairly high up in a tree. July and August are the months in which to look for nests. Two eggs usually form the complete clutch. It would thus seem that green bulbuls have not a great many enemies to fear. Nevertheless they fuss as much over their eggs as some elderly ladies of my acquaintance do over their baggage when travelling. Birds and people who worry themselves unduly over their belongings seem to lose these more often than do those folk who behave more philosophically. Take the case of the common bulbuls. These certainly lose more broods than they succeed in rearing, yet the ado they make when a harmless creature approaches their nest puts one forcibly in mind of the behaviour of the captain of a Russian gunboat when an innocent vessel happens to enter the zone of sea in the centre of which the Czar’s yacht floats.

XXII
CORMORANTS

Cormorants, like Englishmen, have spread themselves all over the earth. Save for a few out-of-the-way islands, there is no country in the world that cannot boast of at least one species of cormorant. Cormorants, then, are an exceedingly successful and flourishing family. It must be very annoying for those worthy professors and museum naturalists who are always lecturing to us about the all-importance of protective colouration that the most flourishing families of birds—the crows and the cormorants—are as conspicuous as it is possible for a thing in feathers to be.

Mr. Seton Thompson well says that every animal has some strong point, or it could not exist; and some weak point, or the other animals could not exist. Cormorants have several strong points, and that is why they flourish like the green bay tree, notwithstanding their conspicuous plumage. They are as hardy as the Scotchman, as voracious as the ostrich, as tenacious of life as a cat, to say nothing of being piscatorial experts, powerful fliers, and champion divers.

The cormorant family furnishes a very good example of the manner in which new species arise quite independently of natural selection. Notwithstanding their world-wide distribution, all cormorants belong to one genus, which is divided up into thirty-seven species. Of these no fewer than fifteen occur in New Zealand—a country not characterised by a large avifauna.

One species—the large cormorant (Phalacocorax carbo)—flourishes in almost every imaginable kind of climate and among all sorts and conditions of birds and beasts. Yet in New Zealand, in a country where the conditions of existence vary but little, cormorants have split up into fifteen species. It is therefore as clear as anything can be in nature that we must look to some cause other than natural selection for an explanation of the multiplicity of species of cormorant in New Zealand. It seems to me that the solution of this puzzle lies in the fact that the conditions of life are comparatively easy in New Zealand. Consequently a well-equipped bird like a cormorant is allowed a certain amount of latitude as to its form and colouring. In places where the struggle for existence is very severe, where organisms have their work cut out to maintain themselves, the chances are that every unfavourable variation will be wiped out by natural selection; but if the struggle is not particularly severe, or if a species has something in hand, it can afford to dispense with part of its advantage and still survive. Thus it is that in New Zealand we see a number of different species of cormorant living side by side. De Vries likens natural selection to a sieve through which all organisms are sifted, and through the meshes of which only those of a certain description are able to pass. Bateson compares it to a public examination to which every organism must submit itself. Those animals that fail to get through are killed. The standard of the examination may vary in various parts of the world.

So much for cormorants in general and the puzzle they present to evolutionists. Let us now consider for a little while our Indian cormorants. For once India is at a disadvantage as compared with New Zealand. There are but three species found in this country—the great, the lesser, and the little cormorant. The last—Phalacocorax javanicus—is the most commonly seen of them all. It is to be found in the various backwaters round about Madras, being especially abundant in the vicinity of Pulicat. At the place where the canal runs into the lake there are a number of stakes driven into the canal bed; these project above the level of the water, and on every one of them a little cormorant is to be seen. Cormorants in such a position always put me in mind of the pillar saints of ancient times. Although very active in the water, cormorants become statuesque in their stillness when they leave it.

The lesser cormorant (Phalacocorax fuscicollis) breeds in nests in the trees on the islets which stud the Redhills Tank near Madras, also on the tank at Vaden Tangal, near Chingleput. The third species of cormorant found in India is the great cormorant (Phalacocorax carbo). This is the one which is world-wide in its distribution. It is a large bird, being over 2 ft. 6 in. in length. It is said to be capable of swallowing at one gulp a fish fourteen inches long. It is less gregarious in its habits than the other cormorants, but it breeds and roosts in colonies. Captain H. Terry states that this species’ nests are to be met with on a tank near Bellary. The great cormorant possesses fourteen tail feathers, while all other cormorants have to put up with twelve. Why the big fellow should be the happy possessor of two extra caudal feathers is a puzzle which no one has attempted to solve.

It is not very easy to distinguish the three species of cormorant from one another. The great cormorant has a conspicuous white bar on each side of the head. This and his larger size serve to separate him from the two smaller forms. It is usually possible to distinguish the other two by the fact that the little cormorant has more white on the throat than his somewhat larger cousin. But, when all is said and done, it is not of great importance to distinguish the various species. All cormorants have almost exactly the same habits. The nests are all mere platforms of sticks. They are all expert fishermen, and seem equally at home on fresh or salt water. They can swim either on or under water and move at a considerable pace, covering nearly 150 yards in a minute. The young are said to feed themselves by inserting their heads into the gullet of the parent and pulling out the half-digested fish. Cormorants are readily tamed and are employed in China to fish for their masters, a rubber ring being inserted round the lower part of the neck in order to prevent the fish from going too far. In bygone days, fishing by means of cormorants was considered good sport, and the royal household used to have its Master of the Cormorants.

Cormorants’ eggs are of a very pale green colour, and their nests smell of bad fish, for the owners care nothing about sanitation. Young cormorants are not nearly so black as their parents, and do not attain adult plumage till they are four years old.

XXIII
A MELODIOUS DRONGO

Our friend the king crow (Dicrurus ater) is so abundant throughout India, and possesses to so great a degree the faculty of arresting the attention, that we are apt to overlook his less numerous relatives. In Ceylon it is otherwise. Dicrurus ater occurs in that fair isle, but only in certain parts thereof, and is not so abundant as his cousin, the white-vented drongo (Dicrurus leucopygialis). The former has, therefore, to play second fiddle in Ceylon, where he is usually known to Europeans as the black fly-catcher. The white-vented drongo is their king crow—the bird that lords over the corvi.

The drongos constitute a well-defined family. When you know one member you can scarcely fail to recognise the others. They fall into two great classes, the fancy and the plain, the dandies and those that dress quietly. The bhimraj, or larger racket-tailed drongo (Dissemurus paradiseus), is the most perfect example of the fancy or ornamental class. His head is set off by a crest, but his speciality is the pair of outer tail feathers, which attain a length of nearly two feet.

Of the less ornamental drongos, the king crow is the best-known example. This bird is found in all parts of India, and occurs in Ceylon. Almost as widely distributed, but far less abundant, is the white-bellied drongo. This species may be met with in all parts of India save the Punjab. In the Western Province of Ceylon it is replaced by a drongo having less white in the plumage.

It is a moot question whether this last is to be looked upon as a race or a distinct species. Legge writes: “No bird in Ceylon is so puzzling as the present, and there is none to which I have given so much attention with a view to arriving at a satisfactory determination as to whether there are two species in the island or only one. I cannot come to any other conclusion than that there is but one, the opposing types of which are certainly somewhat distinct from one another, but which grade into each other in such a manner as to forbid their being rightly considered as distinct species; and I will leave it to others, who like to take the matter up for investigation, to prove whether my conclusions are erroneous or not.” Oates has since constituted the birds which have less white on the lower parts a distinct species, which he calls the white-vented drongo (Dicrurus leucopygialis). He admits that the amount of white on this form and on the white-bellied species (Dicrurus cærulescens) is variable, and that a bird is occasionally met with which might, as regards this character, be assigned indifferently to one or the other species, but, says he, the colour of the throat and breast will, in these cases, be a safe guide in identification. The parts in question are grey in the white-bellied species and dark brown in the white-vented form. It seems to me that a slight difference in the colouring of the feathers of the throat is not a very safe foundation on which to establish a new species. However, this piece of species-splitting need not worry the Anglo-Indian, for the white-vented form is found only in Ceylon. All drongos with white underparts that occur in India are Dicrurus cærulescens. This bird is not common in Madras; I observed it but twice during eighteen months’ residence in that city. It is in shape exactly like the common king crow, and possesses the characteristic forked tail, but it is a smaller bird, being nine and a half inches in length, and therefore shorter by fully three inches than the black drongo. Its upper plumage is deep indigo; the throat and breast are grey; all the remainder of the lower plumage is white. Its habits are very much like those of the king crow, but it is less addicted to the open country, seeming to prefer well-wooded localities. I have never seen the Dhouli, or white-bellied drongo, perched on anything but a branch of a tree. It almost always catches its insect prey upon the wing, after the manner of a fly-catcher. Jerdon, however, states that he once saw it descend to the ground for an insect.

As a singer it is far superior to the king crow. In addition to the harsh notes of that species it produces many melodious sounds. Tickell describes its song as “a wild, mellow whistle pleasingly modulated.” It was the voice of the bird that first attracted my notice. Some eight years ago, when camping in the Fyzabad District, I heard a very pleasing but unknown song. Tracking this to the mango tope whence it issued, I discovered that the author was a white-bellied king crow. Last winter a member of this species favoured me with a fine histrionic performance. I was sitting outside my tent one afternoon, when I heard above me a harsh note that was not quite like that of the king crow. Looking up, I observed, perched on a bare branch at the summit of the tree, a white-bellied drongo. Then, as if for my especial benefit, he began to imitate the call of the shikra; he followed this up by a very fair reproduction of some of the cries of a tree-pie. Having accomplished this, he made, first his bow, then his exit. I was much interested in the performance, since an allied species, the bhimraj, is not only one of the best songsters in the East, but a mimic second only to the wonderful mocking-bird of South America.

The white-bellied drongo is so rare in the peninsula of India that not one of our ornithologists has given us anything like a full account of its habits, and no one appears to have discovered the nest in India. Fortunately, it is very common in Ceylon, so that Legge has been able to give some interesting details regarding its habits. We must bear in mind that Legge includes both the white-bellied varieties under one species. If we divide them into two, the question arises to which do his various observations apply? The reply is to either or both, for Legge was not able to detect any differences between them, except that perhaps the white-vented variety has a more powerful voice. He writes: “It is occasionally, when there is abundance of food about, a sociable species, as many as three or four collecting on one tree, and carrying on a vigorous warfare against the surrounding insect world.” Like the king crow, it is an early riser and a late rooster. It is a great chaser of crows, and of any creature that dares to intrude into the tree in which its nest is placed. Needless to say that it detests owls. Says Legge: “The white-bellied king crow never fails to collect all the small birds in the vicinity whenever it discovers one of these nocturnal offenders, chasing it through the wood until it escapes into some thicket which baffles the pursuit of its persecutors.” But why does he call owls “nocturnal offenders”? Wherein lies their offence? So far as I can see, the only crime that owls commit is in being owls. The creatures they prey upon have reason for disliking them. But owls do not attack ornithologists. Why, then, should these gentry call them hard names?

The nesting habits of both the white-bellied and the white-vented drongos are very similar to those of the common king crow. Legge describes the nest as a shallow cup, almost invariably built at the horizontal fork of the branch of a large tree at a considerable height from the ground, sometimes as much as forty feet. The eggs seem to vary as greatly in appearance as do those of the common king crow.

Since the white-bellied drongo appears to be quite as pugnacious as its black cousin, and to have almost identical habits, it is strange that it should be so uncommon in India. As we have seen, its distribution is wide, so that it seems able to adapt itself to various kinds of climate. Nevertheless, it is common nowhere in India. What is the cause that keeps down its numbers? Naturalists are wont to talk airily about natural selection causing a species to be numerous or the reverse, but unless they can show precisely how natural selection acts they explain nothing. Those who write books on natural history convey the impression that it is the birds and beasts of prey that keep down the numbers of the smaller fry. As a matter of fact, predaceous creatures seem to exercise but little influence on the numbers of their quarry. There are hidden causes at work of which we know almost nothing. Damp and small parasites are probably far more powerful checks on multiplication than predaceous creatures. It would seem that there is something in the constitution of the white-bellied drongo which enables it to outnumber the king crows proper in Ceylon, but which prevents it from becoming abundant in the peninsula of India. What this something is we have yet to discover. We really know very little of the nature of that mysterious force with which naturalists love to conjure, and which Darwin named Natural Selection. We write it with a capital N and a capital S, and then imagine that we have explained everything.