AND LEFHOY. 205 



Haliastur. Garbage, small mammals, birds, lizards, frogs, 

 crustaceans, insects and their larvae : fish. E. B. C. N. H., 168. 

 Kites work havoc among poultry. E. B. C. N. H., 148. 



1228. Haliastur indus. Brahminy Kite. I cannot give a better 

 note on this bird's food than by quoting in full from Jerdon. ' Mr. 

 Smith quoted from Notes on Indian Birds, P. Z. S., 1857, 85, says : 

 ' This bird is among the first objects which attracts the eye of a 

 stranger, for they swarm about the shipping at Calcutta, and are 

 useful in removing any offal which may be thrown away ; but 

 though their usual food is carrion, yet they kill fish, and not unfre- 

 quently carry of a snipe which the sportsman has levelled/ Hodg- 

 son says, it chiefly feeds on insects and quests like a Circus. From 

 my own observations it certainly prefers aquatic food, and is most 

 numerous in the vicinity of sea-shores, large rivers, tanks and rice cul- 

 tivation. About large cities and towns, and where there is much ship- 

 ping, it gets its chief food from garbage arid offal thrown overboard, 

 or, occasionally from what is thrown out in the streets and roads. 

 Near large rivers or lakes it manages to pick off the surface of the 

 water small fishes, or a prawn occasionally ; but its chief food, away 

 from towns and cantonments, is frogs, and crabs, which abound in all 

 rice fields, and the remains of which last, picked clean, may be fourd 

 so abundantly along the little bunds that divide the fields from each 

 other. It will also eat water insects, mice, and shrews, and yourg 

 or sickly birds ; and many a wounded snipe I have seen carried off 

 by the Brahminy Kite. In wooded countries I have seen it questing 

 over the woods, and catching insects, especially large Cicada?, and I 

 have also seen it whip a locust off standing grain. Now and then it 

 gives hot chase to a crow, or even to a common kite and forces them 

 to give up some coveted piece of garbage or dead fish/' ' It is 

 said sometimes to carry off young chickens ar.d pigeons." Jerd. 

 B. I. I, 102-103. It abounds in ports feeding on refuse thrown over- 

 board. It also picks small fish off the surface of water with its 

 claws and captures frogs and crabs in paddy fields and marshes. 

 Small birds are seldom assailed by it unless sickly or weak, but Mr. 

 Rainey saw one kill and eat a king-fisher Alcedo ispida that had 



