on the Ruby-throated Bulbul.



217



five-note call, Too, te, tit, too-it, sometimes altered after a few

repetitions to Too, te, tit, to-who-are-you. Ce-ce go-a?id-do-it and

Come alofig and get it are not unfamiliar sounds. Perhaps it is

only when one conies to analyze the familiar notes of a bird that

one realises how they vary in detail : how can any one doubt

that they are able to speak to and understand one another!

After Ruby had lost a Mesia that for a while kept company with

her—I never heard it before—she being at the time anxious to

breed, she would occasionally, but not very often, break out into

a (usually) one-note bell-like call, continuously and rapidly re¬

peated without a pause, lasting generally for between two and three

minutes, unquestionably a call for a mate. It was quite loud,

and in the stillness of the forest would have been heard at a very

considerable distance; it was uttered only in the garden, from

one of the highest perches, usually in the morning though not

especially early. On one occasion, it was tolled out as a parting

call before retiring in the evening, as a last despairing call for a

mate before withdrawing from the world for “ brooding ” pur¬

poses for the fourth time that year (1906), and lasted close upon

four minutes. The call, in course of time, degenerated into a

repetition of tzvit and too-it.


She seems to be a bird of local habits, as a rule always

roosting in exactly the same spot. During the time she was

associated with the Mesia (see below), she passed the night on a

high twig in the birdroom, side by side with him, but this was

quite foreign to her nature. After his departure, if not interfered

with, she would sleep in a dark sheltered corner in a “house”

with a gable roof in the birdroom; but so nervous was she at

that time (1906) that, if I chanced to enter while she was prepar¬

ing to go to rest and before she had settled down, she would not

gototheusual house. She seemed to have an instinctive dread of

being marked down to her sleeping perch :—countless numbers

of her ancestors during the ages have gone to roost in similar

trepidation, have been “snatched” during the darkness of the

night by some monkey or other creature, and never seen the

dawn. The life of the wild bird is a life of ceaseless and never-

ending terrors—never ending until the end comes, too often



