BIRDS IN THE COTTON TREE 211 



tree-pie {Dendrocitta rufa), the nearest approach we 

 have to the magpie in the plains of India. His long 

 tail and general shape at once stamp him as a magpie, 

 but his colouring is, of course, very different ; in 

 place of a simple garment of black and white he exhibits 

 black, chestnut-brown, silver, white, and yellow in his 

 coat of many hues. You are not likely to see a crowd 

 of tree-pies among the red blossoms, for the simple 

 reason that the species is not gregarious ; but in all 

 localities where tree-pies exist you may be tolerably 

 certain of seeing at least one of these birds at every 

 flowering cotton tree. Tree-pies, be it noted, although 

 widely spread in India, are apparently very capriciously 

 distributed. For some reason which I have not been 

 able to fathom they occur in the neighbourhood of 

 neither Madras nor Bombay. 



Needless to say, the crows join in the drinking bout. 

 The corvi rarely wander far from the path of the 

 transgressor. Fortunately for the starlings, the crows 

 are not passionately fond of the secretion of the Bombax 

 flowers. Did these last exercise so great an attraction 

 for the crows as they do for starlings, the smaller birds 

 would be crowded out by their larger rivals, and the 

 Bombax tree would be black with squawking corvi. 

 The crow drinks the nectar of the cotton tree as a 

 man drinks liqueurs ; the result is that rarely more 

 than two or three crows are to be seen among the 

 scores of starlings and mynas. The flowing bowl seems 

 to have greater attractions for the corby {Corvus macro- 

 rhynchiis) than for the house crow (C. splendens) ; but 

 there is a reason which prevents the too frequent 



