GREEN BULBULS 119 



seeking for the insects, fruit, and seed on which they 

 feed. Like many other gaily attired birds, they give 

 the He 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 con- 

 dition at a bird show in London. " There is one draw- 

 back, 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 har- 

 mony." 



