28 BOMBAY DUCKS 
say, with Colonel Cunningham, that whilst listening to 
it “one realizes the beauty of the dispensation that has 
decreed that in the animal kingdom there should be no 
necessary direct ratio between size and vocal power ; 
an elephant with a voice on the scale of that of a 
tailor-bird would have been a nuisance to a whole 
district.” 
The tailor-bird is interesting chiefly on account of 
the nest it constructs, which is one of the most wonder- 
ful things in Nature. The nursery in which the young 
tailors are born is composed of one or more leaves 
which are sown together by the parents. The bird’s 
beak is its needle, and the cotton is begged, borrowed, 
or stolen. If the fruit of the silk-cotton tree be ripe, 
the tailor-bird extracts cotton from this and spins it 
into thread with beak and feet. If there be no silk- 
cotton trees in the neighbourhood the bird often has 
recourse to “the fibrous webbing at the bases of the 
petioles of the common toddy palm.” 
A lady who resides in Madras informs me that she 
once saw a tailor-bird spinning thread for its nest out 
of a spider’s web. The bird of course prefers its cotton 
thread ready-made when it can find it, so does not 
hesitate to rifle a lady’s work-box if it espies one in an 
accessible place. I would advise those who are fond of 
watching birds to leave some pieces of cotton in the 
verandah during the nesting season, and if there be 
some cannas among the pot plants the chances are 
that a pair of tailor-birds will elect to construct a nest 
in that friendly verandah. 
The method of nest-building varies with the kind of 
