22 BOMBAY DUCKS 



soft stone. Now, I have very great respect for a parrot's 

 beak ; indeed, I positively refuse to handle a strange 

 parrot without first protecting my hands with a pair of 

 driving gloves. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe 

 that a green parrot's beak is capable of boring into 

 stone. Even if the feat were possible, I do not think 

 that " poor Polly " would attempt it, for the excavation 

 would certainly give him beak-ache, which must be 

 quite as painful as tooth-ache. 



The common green parrot is found all over India, 

 except in the higher hills. Hence those who would 

 escape the noisy cries of our green friends have but to 

 shake the dust of the plains from off their feet and 

 ascend to the abode of the gods. The birds, however, 

 venture up to a height of about five thousand feet in 

 Southern India. Above this they will not trust them- 

 selves, for they are tropical birds, and love not a low 

 temperature. 



Although green parrots are so widely scattered, they 

 are by no means uniformly distributed through the 

 peninsula. In Bombay, for example, they are almost as 

 numerous as the crows. In Calcutta they are not 

 plentiful, while in Madras one does not see a dozen in 

 the course of the summer. They are more abundant, 

 however, in what those who dwell in the Benighted 

 Presidency speak of as " the cold weather." 



This uneven distribution of birds is a curious phe- 

 nomenon, and many species exhibit it. So far as I 

 know, no satisfactory explanation has been offered. It 

 does not appear to be a question of food-supply or 

 climate, for it often happens that a certain kind of bird 



