28 BOMBAY DUCKS 



say, with Colonel Cunningham, that whilst listening to 

 it " one realizes the beauty of the dispensation that has 

 decreed that in the animal kingdom there should be no 

 necessary direct ratio between size and vocal power ; 

 an elephant with a voice on the scale of that of a 

 tailor-bird would have been a nuisance to a whole 

 district." 



The tailor-bird is interesting chiefly on account of 

 the nest it constructs, which is one of the most wonder- 

 ful things in Nature. The nursery in which the young 

 tailors are born is composed of one or more leaves 

 which are sown together by the parents. The bird's 

 beak is its needle, and the cotton is begged, borrowed, 

 or stolen. If the fruit of the silk-cotton tree be ripe, 

 the tailor-bird extracts cotton from this and spins it 

 into thread with beak and feet. If there be no silk- 

 cotton trees in the neighbourhood the bird often has 

 recourse to "the fibrous webbing at the bases of the 

 petioles of the common toddy palm." 



A lady who resides in Madras informs me that she 

 once saw a tailor-bird spinning thread for its nest out 

 of a spider's web. The bird of course prefers its cotton 

 thread ready-made when it can find it, so does not 

 hesitate to rifle a lady's work-box if it espies one in an 

 accessible place. I would advise those who are fond of 

 watching birds to leave some pieces of cotton in the 

 verandah during the nesting season, and if there be 

 some cannas among the pot plants the chances are 

 that a pair of tailor-birds will elect to construct a nest 

 in that friendly verandah. 



The method of nest-building varies with the kind of 



