84 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



senting a family, but now and then parties ot 

 twelve or fourteen individuals may be met with, 

 and in such cases a family group must have been 

 recruited from without, or two distinct families must 

 have fused with one another. More frequently 

 groups are seen in which the number of individual 

 birds falls below the normal standard, but this may 

 be readily accounted for as the result of casual 

 reduction owing to accidents taking place before the 

 onset of a new breeding season has intervened to 

 give rise to a general dispersion of the community. 



During the greater part of the year every well- 

 conditioned garden is alive with parties of babblers, 

 who go rustling around everywhere among the dead 

 leaves in the shrubberies and keep up a ceaseless 

 gabble of conversation as they follow one another 

 about, turning over the fallen leaves and twigs, and 

 peering and prying beneath them for insects, snails, 

 and worms. Whilst busy among the leaves they 

 always have an air of dreading to find some terrify- 

 ing or gruesome object concealed among them, and 

 are constantly leaping into the air and starting 

 backwards as they toss the litter about and call 

 "peyh, peyh, peyh, peyh." They have no depressing 

 consciousness of their unsightly look, but seem to 

 be in the highest of spirits, and are constantly 

 running races and chasing one another about. 



When a party of them is busy among an 

 accumulation of dead leaves or long withered grass, 



