1 6 THE KITES, BUZZARDS AND HARRIERS. 



that easy, undulating motion, which glides down a 

 street, tops a house, dips into a lane, rounds a 

 corner, all with the same effortless grace. There is 

 more steering required for these evolutions than for 

 the circling of a vulture, hence the Kite carries an 

 expansive, forked tail, a kind of twin helm, which 

 it manages with a skill that is perfectly beautiful. 

 All the while you may see its head turning this way 

 and that, as it scans every corner with its keen eyes 

 for anything that may be " lifted." It does not insist 

 that life shall be extinct. Any bird or little animal 

 which is sickly, wounded, or young enough to be 

 picked off the ground with a swoop, is welcome. 

 Chicks not over a month old are particularly eligible, 

 as everybody knows to his sorrow who has tried to 

 keep poultry in India. When a Kite becomes a 

 confirmed chicken-eater there is nothing to be done 

 but to shoot it, which is a pity, for they deserve to 

 be protected. The quantity of dead rats, scraps of 

 offal, and other refuse which they remove from our 

 streets and the precincts of our outhouses in the 

 course of the year, must be enormous. The Crows 

 offer their services for the same work, and I would 

 not underrate their usefulness, but a Crow sitting 

 down to breakfast on a dead bandicoot in the middle 

 of the street is itself an offence. The Kite removes 

 the nuisance, and what it does with it afterwards is 

 no concern of ours. 



We have two kinds of Kites in Bombay, the 

 Common (Milvus gomnda) and the Brahminy 

 (Haliastur indus) , so called because it seems to be 

 a bird of higher caste. It is smaller than the other 

 and very much handsomer. Its head, neck and 



