38 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



had come in for the evening and, before going to 

 roost, had assembled on a flat roof on which a 

 number of fragments of wood were lying about, in 

 order to play a game of the following kind. One 

 of them, taking up a stick, ran off, and was pursued 

 by his comrades until one of them succeeded in 

 twitching it out of his beak, and, in his turn, became 

 the object of pursuit ; the process being repeated 

 again and again, and seeming to give the utmost 

 satisfaction to the company. A solitary bird may 

 sometimes be seen playing about in a vague way, 

 but it is only rarely that a number of them rise to 

 the level of playing a continuous and co-operative 

 game, as in this instance. 



When one thinks of the endless series of excite- 

 ment and more or less disreputable adventures that 

 crows must have gone through during the course 

 of their day's outing, it seems strange that they 

 should have energy enough left, on returning to 

 the neighbourhood of their roosts, for anything but 

 quietly going to bed. But they never show any 

 signs of fatigue, and invariably, unless they return 

 unusually late, spend quite a long time in bathing 

 and gossiping over the events of the day. As 

 they come in, they do not at once make for the 

 trees in which they intend to pass the night, but 

 congregate on the tops of buildings or the upper 

 boughs of thinly-foliaged trees and there converse 

 noisily for some time. Every now and then one 



