COMMON BIRDS OF THE YANGTZE DELTA. 1 I 



last fifty feet at a single dive and in silence. Sometimes 

 before touching the ground he will go up again and start 

 all over again as if too full of music to hold it in. The 

 ^jChinese have rightly named him kao t'ien ts, " messenger 

 of heaven." 



For pure beauty of colouring none of our birds can 

 surpass the little blue kingfisher {Alcedo bengalensis). 

 His whole upper parts are a beautiful blending of azure and 

 deep blue. He has a white spot on the side of the head and 

 is white underneath, more or less tinted buff. The Chinese 

 make some very beautiful jewellery by. mounting the azure 

 feathers of the back in various settings. H4s Chinese book 

 name is tse tsiah, but his common name is ng-ho-ts, 

 or fish tiger. It sounds rather fierce for so small a bird's 

 but if we watch him fishing, and see with what deadly 

 certainty he brings out a fish every time he strikes it, it does 

 not seem to be so very far wrong. There is another blue 

 kingfisher, much larger and more beautifully coloured, 

 occasionally seen here but he is more abundant further 

 south. 



The woodpecker we most frequently meet with is the 

 Yangtze green woodpecker (Gecinus guerini). The Chinese 

 name for him is tsoh moh tiao or wood-striker. His head 

 is dark grey with a black line in the centre, another on each 

 cheek, and a crimson red patch on the forehead. The body 

 is soft grey, darker on wings, and tail, and the whole washed 

 with a greenish golden yellow from which he is named. 

 The wing quills are regularly spotted, dirty white. He 

 resembles somewhat the American flicker., His call is 

 loud and shrill, and like the flicker he often seeks his food 

 on the ground as well as in the trees. 



The cuckoos are much oftener heard than seen. Two 

 come to us every summer. The Indian cuckoo (Cucultis 

 micropteriis) is the most common, and is readily known by 

 his four-syllable call, which the Chinese interpret as hwa- 

 kwa tsah mah, "quick-quick, reap wheat", or kwa-kwa tsoong 

 hwoo, "quick-quick plant cotton." 



The European cuckoo {Cuculus canonis) calls ku-koo in 

 plain English, and the Chinese so name him. The females 

 of both birds, and I think sometimes the males also, utter a 

 short kuk-kuk. 



The two cuckoos are very difficult to distinguish by their 

 colouration, both are brownish ashy-grey variously barred 

 and banded with brown. The Indian cuckoo is rather more 

 heavily marked, has a larger bill, and a darker eye, but the 

 only safe way to distinguish them in the trees is to wait for 

 a call, which will certainly show which bird you have. The 

 Indian cuckoo comes first in t^ie spring, about the last of 



