190 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



out of their domain. The exceptionally conspicuous 

 and defenceless nature of their nests, and the fact that 

 eggs and young birds are to be found in them at all 

 times of year are very sufficient reasons why doves 

 should show a special animosity to such marauders. 



Tree-pies have a somewhat laboured and strangely 

 noisy flight, but when once fairly on the wing pre- 

 sent a quaint and attractive likeness to the pheasants 

 that so often enliven the backgrounds in Pintur- 

 icchio's frescoes. Owing to the distribution of the 

 colouring, and the relative sparseness of the webbing 

 of the basal part of the feathers, the tail of a bird 

 seen on the wing at a little distance often looks as 

 though it were racketed. As might be expected 

 of birds of such generally depraved habits, they 

 are constant and riotous participants in the drinking 

 bouts attending the flowering of the silk-cotton- 

 trees. They are not nearly so easily tamed as the 

 common European magpie, even in cases where 

 they have been taken quite young. An old bird, 

 that was for long one of the inmates of an aviary, 

 never showed any signs of becoming at all familiar, 

 and to the end of his captivity always got into a 

 great fluster and dashed wildly about whenever 

 any one approached his prison. In this persistent 

 wildness they are very unlike the common blue 

 Himalayan magpies, who are very readily tamed, and 

 then show all the charmingly eldritch tricks of 

 European magpies in captivity. 



