OF INDIAN BIRDS IN GENERAL 7 



will find no lack of superlatives among our Indian birds. 

 The weaver-bird (Ploceus hay a) , the wren -warbler (Prinia 

 inornata) are past masters of the art of weaving. The 

 tailor-bird {Orthotomus sutorius), as its name implies, 

 has brought the sartorial art to a pitch of perfection 

 which is not likely to be excelled by any creature 

 who has no needle other than its beak. 



If there be any characteristic in which Indian birds 

 are not pre-eminent it is perhaps the art of singing. 

 A notion is abroad that Indian birds cannot sing. They 

 are able to scream, croak, and make all manner of weird 

 noises, but to sing they know not how. This idea 

 perhaps derives its origin from Charles Kingsley, who 

 wrote : '* True melody, it must be remembered, is un- 

 known, at least at present, in the tropics and peculiar 

 to the races of those temperate climes into which the 

 song-birds come in spring." This is, of course, absurd. 

 Song-birds are numerous in India. They do not make 

 the same impression upon us as do our English birds 

 because their song has not those associations which 

 render dear to us the melody of birds in the homeland. 

 Further, there is nothing in India which corresponds 

 to the English spring, when the passion of the earth 

 is at its highest, because there is in that country no sad 

 and dismal winter-time, when life is sluggish and feeble. 

 The excessive joy, the rapture, the ecstasy with which 

 we greet the spring in the British Isles is, to a certain 

 extent, a reaction. There suddenly rushes in upon the 

 songless winter a mighty chorus, a tumult of birds to 

 which we can scarcely fail to attach a fictitious value. 

 India possesses some song-birds which can hold their 



