9586 Birds. 



scream, and when disturbed by a cat, snake or bird of prey, it sounds 

 a warning note, very harsh and loud ; this is often taken up by other 

 minahs, so that the real cause of the noise u^ay be a quarter of a 

 mile off. 



Minahs attend cattle when feeding or when lying down, and dex- 

 terously catch the flies which abound round the animal's noses, or 

 are whisked off by their tails. This bird is not an adept in building, 

 for its nest is a very slovenly finished affair, placed on some ledge of 

 an inside wall or iii the aperture of a gutter-pipe, where the stupid bird 

 will build its nest three or four times, lay its eggs, perhaps rear its 

 young ones half-fledged, and four times have its nest washed down hy 

 the heavy rain before it gives up the situation as a bad one. The 

 nest is composed of dry grass, small sticks, old rags, pieces of paper 

 and feathers, and from four to five eggs are laid of a dull pale blue ; 

 these are in size rather smaller than a thrush's. The male bird takes 

 his turn upon the eggs, to allow the female to feed, and when he 

 attends upon the female always seems to have a good deal to tell her, 

 as a great amount of chattering goes on. The young birds are at first 

 of a dusky brown, and accompany their parents for many days, on the 

 ground or on short experimental flights from tree to tree ; they are very 

 importunate for their parents to feed them, even when they are quite 

 big enough to lake care of themselves, and I have often seen the 

 female bird give her young ones a severe pecking to make them earn 

 their own white ant or grasshopper. 



In the evening the minahs of a neighbourhood collect in some thick- 

 leafed tree and make a great noise until it gets dark, when they all 

 remain silent; sometimes, however, in the dead of the night some 

 dyspeptic individual, waking up from its sleep, will give a squeak, and 

 it will be responded to by all the others in the tree, once, perhaps twice, 

 and all is still again. Minahs are very early risers, for they begin making 

 a few enquiring notes before the gun fires of a morning ; when J,he 

 report comes they all fly out of their roosting-places with loud screams 

 and whistling, some one way, some another. 



The food of the minah is worms, grubs, grasshoppers and other 

 insects found in grass, varied by a little fruit ; they eat bread, rind of 

 cheese, boiled rice and raw meat, but I have never seen them eat dry 

 grain of any kind. During the rains the minah catches the white ant 

 in the air when these insects emerge from the ground, which they do 

 then in tens of thousands : the bird is not very graceful in its flight 

 after them, nor can it fly very quick, but nevertheless succeeds in 

 catching a great many. I have been informed the minah will build a 



