170 Bird Catching in India. 



(aB' cd) to) be jerked upwards, so that they meet in the/ 

 air, carrying with them the nets ; these then stand up as a 

 closed cage, looking like a tent. 



The [above description is, I fear, not very lucid. A 

 roug"h idea ofj how the apparatus works can be obtained by 

 taking a couple of playing, cards and placing them side by 

 side fiat on the table, about an inch apart, and raising each 

 cArd !by the edge away from the other card, until the. two 

 edges meet in the air and thus form the first stage in the 

 making oif, a card house. The cards when placed flat on the 

 table resemble roughly the net when set, and when leaning 

 against lone another give the position of the net after the cane 

 has been pulled. 



The egret catchers repair to a, village in 

 the trees of which cattle egrets roost and rest in the middle 

 of the day. Such, trees are always near a jhil or tank. In 

 the shallowest part of this one or more sets of nets are set, 

 and at, the place where the wild birds must alight, in order 

 to be caught, two or, taore; decoy egrets are tethered to pegs 

 placed tinder water. These have their eyes sewn up to pre- 

 vent them from struggling. In order to give an additional 

 touclij bf colour these bird-catchers often have with them a 

 Black-leggedl Stork, which they allow to wander about the 

 tank after having blind-folded it. Having set the nets and 

 placed the lure birds in position, the bird-catchers hide near 

 by, lOne of them holding the end of the cane ready to tug at 

 it as soon as a wild egret walks into the trap. The egrets 

 in! the tree seeing some of their own kind standing placidly 

 in the water and the stork wandering about think that the men 

 who have been working on the }hil have gone away. Sooner 

 or later one of the wild egrets alights near the decoy birds; 

 the cane is at once jerked and, before the wild egret realises 

 what has happened, it finds itself caught within the net. One 

 of the bird-catchers at once runs up, secures the captive 

 egret, opens out its wings, holds the bird's left wing between 

 the big toe and the second toe of his right foot and the 

 right wing in his left foot and pulls out the dorsal plumes 

 if these are well-developed. Having performed this opera- 

 tion, which takes only a few seconds, he releases the deplumed 



