Preface 
—a procedure which causes pain to many 
and gives pleasure to very few. Moreover, 
unless the seeker after knowledge has some 
notion as to the order to which the bird he 
has shot belongs, he will find that seeking it 
out in the four bird volumes of the Fauna of 
British India series is a task almost as hopeless 
as that of looking for the proverbial needle in 
a haystack. 
Eha’s truly admirable book, entitled The 
Common Birds of Bombay, gives the reader a 
vivid description of our common Indian birds 
as they appear to the field naturalist; and I 
heartily commend this little masterpiece to 
every Anglo-Indian. But even this does not 
enable the observer to identify in a few 
seconds any bird he sees, for it is not written 
in the form of a key. The present book is an 
attempt at a key to the everyday birds of the 
plains of India, a dictionary of birds so arranged 
that the budding ornithologist is able to turn 
up any particular bird in a few minutes. 
This book is, I believe, the first of its kind 
that has been attempted. 
The method I have adopted is. to classify 
birds according to their habits and outward 
appearance. Every bird has a colour, and 
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