252 COMMON BIRDS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



are less likely to attract casual notice, owing to their 

 small size and dull brown colouring, and because they 

 avoid the immediate neighbourhood of houses; but 

 almost every garden containing a few common tadi- 

 palms, Borassus flabelliformis, is pretty sure to be 

 tenanted by a colony of them. Their nests are 

 curious little cups, neatly glued into the grooved 

 surfaces of the lower sides of the great fan-shaped 

 leaves of the palms. In the neighbourhood of 

 Calcutta they seem to be fully tenanted in the 

 beginning of the hot season, and for a second time 

 shortly after the onset of the rains. After the eggs 

 have been hatched the sites of such colonies become 

 very lively, owing to the frequent visits of the parent 

 birds, who are constantly darting in and out among 

 the leaves busy in providing food for the nestlings, 

 who greet their parents with shrill cries, and seem 

 never to be satisfied in spite of the rapidity with 

 which successive supplies of food are brought in. 

 At other times of year the old birds are especially 

 active in the evening, and rush about in great 

 numbers uttering small, shrill, bee-eater-like cries, 

 that become very audible as the dusk deepens and 

 the notes of other birds gradually die away. 



The common Indian goat-sucker, Caprimulgus 

 asiaticus the "ice-bird" of Anglo-Indians is a 

 constant and familiar object in suburban gardens, 

 where every evening they come out, like gigantic 

 grey and white moths, to flutter and whirl about 



