238 JUNGLE FOLK 



the greater part of the day and seizing every insect 

 that they meet. 



The Indian sand-martin is a species especially dear 

 to the ornithologist because it nests in winter, when 

 comparatively few other birds are so occupied. Speak- 

 ing generally, the cold weather may be said to be the 

 " silly season " of the bird world. 



There is one drawback to India from the point of 

 view of the ornithologist, and that is the habit of the 

 great majority of birds of building their nests at the 

 time when the sun shines forth pitilessly from a 

 cloudless sky for twelve hours out of the twenty-four, 

 burning up all vegetation and raising the temperature 

 of the air to furnace heat. Under such conditions the 

 pleasure of watching the birds is tempered by the 

 physical discomfort to which the bird-watcher is put. 

 Very pleasant, then, is it, after months of excessive 

 heat, to awake from sleep one morning to find that the 

 cool weather has come at last, to feel the morning air 

 blow fresh against the cheek, and to look out on an 

 earth enveloped in dense mist. Before one's horse is 

 saddled, the first rays of the sun dissipate the mist 

 with almost magic suddenness, and then one rides forth 

 over dew-bejewelled plains of grass. If on such a 

 morning one repairs to a sand-pit or a river bank, one 

 is hkely there to meet with a colony of sand-martins, 

 for it is early in the cold weather that those birds 

 begin to construct their nests, which are holes bored in 

 sand-banks by the birds themselves. 



Like the majority of very small birds, sand-martins 

 show but little fear of human beings. Tits, white-eyes. 



