4 AN APOLOGY 



the variety and confidence of the birds of an Indian 

 town. With an experience of an urban bird popula- 

 tion consisting mainly of smoke-dyed sparrows and 

 occasional rooks and jackdaws, it comes as a strange 

 revelation to a native of the British islands to learn 

 how many different kinds of birds can adapt them- 

 selves to a life among crowded streets. It seems 

 strange to see green parrots clinging and fluttering 

 about the walls ; mynas pacing the streets with 

 alert, stare-like gait ; doves nesting and calling in 

 the trees ; bulbuls leaping by, volatu undoso, as 

 Gilbert White has it of woodpeckers ; barbets busily 

 occupied with excavations in dead boughs ; honey- 

 suckers twinkling about among the garden shrubs ; 

 kingfishers sitting "still as a stone" over pools of 

 dirty water ; gigantic storks wheeling about over- 

 head like the dragons in old German woodcuts or 

 standing in statuesque attitudes on the roofs; every- 

 where a busy throng of crows and kites ; and, in 

 addition to all these resident birds, occasional repre- 

 sentatives of the temporary visitors who every now 

 and then stray in from the surrounding country 

 along the highways furnished by the roadside and 

 garden trees. 



Birds certainly form the most conspicuous 

 element in the lower vertebrate Fauna of an Indian 

 town, but mammals, reptiles, batrachians, and fishes 

 are not absent. Rats and mice of several kinds are, 

 like the poor, always with one, and more obtrusive 



