Preface 



— a procedure which causes pain to many 

 and gives pleasure to very few. Moreover, 

 unless the seeker after knowledge has some 

 notion as to the order to which the bird he 

 has shot belongs, he will find that seeking it 

 out in the four -bird volumes of the Fauna of 

 British India series is a task almost as hopeless 

 as that of looking for the proverbial needle in 

 a haystack. 



Eha's truly admirable book, entitled 7he 

 Common Birds of Bombay, gives the reader a 

 vivid description of our common Indian birds 

 as they appear to the field naturalist ; and I 

 heartily commend this little masterpiece to 

 every Anglo-Indian. But even this does not 

 enable the observer to identify in a few 

 seconds any bird he sees, for it is not written 

 in the form of a key. The present book is an 

 attempt at a key to the everyday birds of the 

 plains of India, a dictionary of birds so arranged 

 that the budding ornithologist is able to turn 

 up any particular bird in a few minutes. 

 This book is, I beUeve, the first of its kind 

 that has been attempted. 



The method I have adopted is to classify 

 birds according to their habits and outward 

 appearance. Every bird has a colour, and 



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