BIRDS IN THE COTTON TREE 209 



continues. It may, perhaps, cease for a time during 

 the first two hours after noon, when the wind blows 

 like a blast from a titanic furnace. But it soon 

 recommences, and not imtil the sun has set in a dusty 

 haze, and the harsh clamours of the spotted owlets 

 (Athene hrama) are heard, does the noisy assembly of 

 brawlers leave the tree in peace. 



The cause of all the revelry is this. The nectar 

 which the great red flowers secrete is to certain birds 

 what absinthe is to some Frenchmen. First and fore- 

 most, amongst the votaries of the silk-cotton tree 

 are the rose-coloured starlings [Pastor roseus). During 

 the winter months these birds are not a conspicuous 

 feature of the India avifauna, for they do not then go 

 about in great flocks. But from the time the cotton 

 tree is in blossom until the grain crops are cut, the 

 rosy starlings vie with the crows in obtruding them- 

 selves upon the notice of human beings in Northern 

 India. You cannot ride far in the month of March 

 without hearing these birds. Their clamour is truly 

 starling-like ; they produce that curious harsh sibilant 

 sound which is so easy to recognise, but so difficult to 

 describe, that noise which Edmund Selous calls a 

 murmuration, and which the countryfolk at home term 

 a " charm," meaning, as Richard Jefferies expresses it, 

 " a noise made up of innumerable lesser sounds, each 

 interfering with the other." 



Look in the direction whence the sound issues and a 

 blaze of scarlet will meet the eye ; it is amid this that 

 the rosy starlings are calling, for where the silk-cotton 

 tree is in bloom there are these birds certain to be, 

 p 



