620 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 1908. 



torius), as its name implies, has brought the sartorial art to a pitch 

 of perfection which is not likely to be excelled by any creature which 

 has no needle other than its beak. 



The nests of the various species of orioles are in their way quite as 

 wonderful as those of the tailor-bird. Each is a hammock slung by 

 means of strong fibers (frequently strips of the pliable bark of the 

 mulberry tree) to a forked branch in much the same manner as a 

 prawn net is secured to its wooden framework. 



SONG BIRDS. 



If there be any characteristic which Indian birds do not possess to 

 a degree it is perhaps the ability to sing. A notion is abroad that the 

 birds of Hindustan can not sing, that they are able to scream, croak, 

 and make all manner of weird noises ; but to sing they know not how. 

 This idea perhaps derives its origin from Charles Kingsley, who 

 wrote : 



True melody, it must be remembered, is unknown, at least at present, in the 

 Tropics, and peculiar to the races of those temperate climes into which the song 

 birds come in spring. 



This is, of course, absurd. 



Song birds are numerous in India. They do not make the same 

 impression upon us as do our English birds, because, firstly, we are 

 older and therefore less impressionable when we first hear them ; and, 

 secondly, their song has not those associations which render dear to 

 us the melody of birds in the homeland. Further, there is nothing in 

 India which corresponds to the English spring, when the passion of 

 tlie earth is at its highest, because there is in India no sad and dismal 

 v/inter time, when life is sluggish and feeble. 



The excessive joy, the rapture, the ecstasy with which we greet 

 spring in the British Isles is, to a certain extent, a reaction. There 

 suddenly rushes in upon the songless winter a mighty chorus, a tumult 

 of birds, to which we can scarcely fail to attach a fictitious value. 



India possesses some song birds which can hold their own in any 

 company. Were the shama {Cittocincla macrura), the magpie robin 

 (Copsychus saularis), the fantailed flycatcher {Rhipidura alhifron- 

 rate), the orange-headed ground thrush {Geocichla citrina), the white 

 eye {Zosterops palpebrosa) ^ the purple sunbird {Arachnechthra asi- 

 atica), and the bhimraj {Dissemurns paradiseus) , to visit England in 

 the summer, they would supplant, in popular favor, some of our 

 English song birds. 



FEARLESSNESS OF INDIAN BIRDS. 



Indian birds generally are characterized by their fearlessness of 

 man. It were easy to occupy a whole hour in citing examples of this. 



