XIV 

 BIRDS ON THE LAWN 



IN some parts of India the hot -weather nights 

 are sufficiently cool to allow the European 

 inhabitants to dispense with punkas and to 

 enjoy refreshing sleep in the open beneath 

 the starlit sky. He who spends the night under 

 such conditions sees and hears much of the birds. 

 Not an hour passes in which the stillness of the dark- 

 ness is not broken by the voice of some owl or cuckoo. 

 Most of our Indian cuckoos are as nocturnal as owls. 

 The brain - fever bird {Hierococcyx varius) — most 

 vociferous of the cuculine tribe — seems to require 

 no sleep. 



The human sleeper, no matter how early he wakes 

 in the morning, finds that some of the feathered 

 folk have already begun the day. Every diurnal 

 bird is up and about long before the rising of the sun. 

 In the daylight the gauze curtains which kept the 

 mosquitoes at bay during the night, form a mo§t 

 convenient cache from which to observe the doings 

 of the birds. Birds do not see through the meshes 

 of the mosquito nets. Eyesight is largely a matter 

 of training. This explains why the vision of birds is 



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