228 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



of desirable food may yet be met with. When 

 returning from their nesting haunts for the season 

 many of them may even yet be seen passing high 

 aloft over the streets, arid a few stray individuals 

 may even make a brief halt in one or other of the 

 places in the town in which they used most to 

 congregate; but it has become quite a rare thing 

 to see one perched on the roof of a house in gloomy 

 meditation, or stalking about one of the open spaces 

 of the town. Their absence may be matter of 

 gratulation as indicating that some improvement 

 has taken place in the conditions of human exist- 

 ence; but it can only be deplored as involving the 

 loss of a picturesque element that the town could 

 ill afford. 



It is hard to realise what an endless source of 

 amusement and admiration these birds formerly 

 were. Their yearly return towards the close of 

 the hot weather was joyfully hailed as the herald 

 of the approach of the monsoon-rains with their 

 welcome fall in temperature; they formed decora- 

 tive features in the landscape as they stood in files 

 along the cornices and roofs of conspicuous build- 

 ings, or gathered in groups on the open plain of 

 the maidan; their flight as they sailed and soared 

 about high overhead was, if possible, even more 

 magnificent than that of vultures ; and their endless 

 eccentricities of attitude and movement when in 

 quest of food provided ceaseless entertainment, 



