VOICES OF THE NIGHT 249 



Needless to state these three species are the brain - 

 fever bird, the koel, and the Indian cuckoo — a tri- 

 umvirate that it is impossible to match anywhere else 

 in the world. Some there are who fail to distinguish 

 between these three giants, and who believe that they 

 are but one bird with an infinite variety of notes. This 

 is not so. They are not one bird, but three birds. Let 

 us take them in order of merit. 



The brain-fever bird or hawk cuckoo [Hierococcyx 

 varhis) is facile princeps. In appearance it is very like 

 a sparrow-hawk, and, but for its voice, it might be 

 mistaken for one. This species has two distinct notes. 

 The first of these is well described by Cunningham as a 

 '* highly pitched, trisyllabic cry, repeated many times 

 in ascending semitones until one begins to think, as 

 one sometimes does when a Buddhist is repeating his 

 ordinary formula of prayer, that the performer must 

 surely burst." But the brain-fever bird never does 

 burst. He seems to know to a scruple how much 

 he may with safety take out of himself. It is not 

 necessary to dilate upon this note. Have we not all 

 listened to the continued screams of "brain-fever, 

 brain-fever, Brain-fever," until we began to fear for 

 our reason ? The other call is in no way inferior in 

 magnitude. It consists of a volley of single descending 

 notes, uttered with consummate ease — facilis descensus 

 — which may or may not, at the option of the per- 

 former, be followed by one or more mighty shouts 

 of Brain-fever. There is not an hour in the twenty- 

 four during the hot weather when this fiend does not 

 make himself heard in the parts of the country haunted 



