26 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



once reduce them to a state of helpless, hopeless 

 idiocy whenever they are caught poaching in a place 

 from which there is no way of precipitate exit. 

 There is, of course, this great difference in the two 

 cases, that the mynas have only looked in from 

 civility or polite curiosity, whereas the crows have 

 done so with felonious intent ; but, even allowing 

 this, it seems strange that a sense of guilt should 

 lead such hardened and habitual criminals as crows 

 are to lose their heads so completely as they do in 

 such a case. 



It is a never-ending joy to watch mynas pacing 

 and racing about over the grass in search of worms 

 and insects. They never hop, but step and run 

 lightly from place to place, always looking alert and 

 well-dressed. When a pair of them have come across 

 a desirable lawn, they very soon come to look upon it 

 as their private property, returning to it every morn- 

 ing and evening with the greatest regularity, and, 

 where the space is a limited one, showing extreme 

 jealousy of any intrusion by other birds, and specially 

 by any of their own relatives. During one season 

 a pair appropriated the little lawn at the back of 

 my house, and would not endure the incursions of 

 the brown shrikes who haunted the neighbouring 

 shrubbery and were occasionally tempted out upon 

 the grass by the presence of specially alluring insects. 

 They were also constantly engaged in hunting away 

 a pair of pied starlings who had a nest in a tall tree 



