Jottings on common Indian Birds.



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One constantly sees about the gardens and compounds several

little grey-brown birds very busy on the ground beneath the trees.

They have a way of flying off one behind the other, very much as

our Long-tailed Tits do in England. I think it is these birds that

are popularly called the ‘ seven sisters.’ They are the Common

Babbler ( Augya caudata ).


The Bulbuls have been so intimately woven into eastern tale

and legend that we have come to imagine that their song must be

the most beautiful thing in the world, more beautiful even than the

song of the Nightingale. I know not how this may be ; there may

possibly be a Bulbul—they are a large family—that can outvie our

own divine warbler, but I have not met it yet. But there is one

dark-crested, bright-eyed, sweetly-singing little bird that would run

the Black-cap close—the Red-vented Bulbul (Malpaster hcemorrhous ).

It is in every little garden ; in the palms, the hibiscus, everywhere.

The one little patch of bright colour is naturally not very prominent,

but there it is.


Anyone familiar with South Africa will at once recognise old

friends in the Fork-tailed Drong'os. The Indian one most often seen

is the Common Black Drong'o or “King Crow” (Dicrurus ater).

One sees it catching flies from the bungalow coping, from the dead

arms of the aloe flowers, from telegraph wires as evening falls.

In Sikhim, we saw on the very tip top of a tree, and in Nepal,

a drongo that should be the Bronzed Drongo ( Ghaptia osnea). I do

not know why I never noticed in India a bird seen several times in

the jungle of Ceylon, but it is so general in India that we may take

it as seen ; this is the Racquet-tailed Drongo ( Dissemurusparadiseus ).

A most remarkable bird, its incurved outer tail feathers reach to

twenty inches in length (Oates). The colour is blue-black.


In Sikhim also (King Charles’s head will not keep out of the

story) in Sikhim, then, we once saw the lovely little Wall-Creeper

(:Tichodromia muraria). It was creeping about on the side of a rock

by the river Tista, four days out of Darjeeling. Creeping thus in

little jerks about a lichen-covered rock the bird would not be very

easily seen, but that as it creeps it opens and closes its wings,

bringing into view the beautiful crimson of the lesser wing-coverts,



