THE TEESA 33 



terror of other birds. As Phil Robinson says of them, 

 " they stand in the sky as the symbol of calamity. 

 When they stoop to the earth it is a vision of sudden 

 death." To speak thus of Butastur teesa would be, 

 as Euclid says, absurd. The white-eyed buzzard is 

 almost contemptible as a bird of prey ; he is a raptorial 

 degenerate, a mere loafer. 



In India one often sees a white-eyed buzzard, some 

 mynas, a pair of doves, several bee-eaters, one or two 

 king crows, and a roller, sitting, all in a row, on a tele- 

 graph wire within a few yards of one another ; the 

 first and the last, as likely as not, on the tops of the 

 telegraph poles, looking like pillar saints. Contrast 

 this state of affairs with what happens when a hawk 

 or a falcon appears on the scene. " Take to woodland," 

 writes Phil Robinson, " and fill it with your birds of 

 beauty and of song; put your 'blackbird pipers in every 

 tree,' and have linnets ' starting all along the bushes.' 

 Let melody burthen every bough and every cloud 

 hold a lark. Have your doves in the pines, and your 

 thrushes in the hawthorn ; spangle your thistle-beds 

 with restless goldfinches, and your furze with yellow- 

 hammers. The sun is shining brightly, and the country- 

 side seems fairly overflowing with gladness. But with 

 a single touch you can alter the whole scene ; for let 

 one hawk come skimming round that copse yonder, 

 and the whole woodland is mute in the moment. Here 

 and there shrill warning cries of alarm, and here and 

 there a bird dipping into the central covert of the 

 brake. But for the rest there might not be one winged 

 thing alive in all the landscape. The hawk throws a 



