The Indian Magpie 'Rohin or T)hayal Bird. 271 
verandah, or on the lawn, our bokl and handsome friend would 
fly into the low braneiies of a tree quite close to us, jerking 
his long tail perpendicularly over his back, and keeping a 
sharj) look out for any insects that might happen to be on 
the move in the immediate neighbourhood. 
Suddenly he drops down on the ground and snaps up 
a grasshopper and is back again into the tree in a moment. 
IT the. mails (garden labourers) happen to be drawing water 
from the well, and flooding certain parts of the garden he has 
a rare good time, and so do we in watching him. As the 
water runs over the beds, or the grass, as the case may be, 
numbers of beetles, grasshoppers, ants and other insects are 
dislodged from the cracks in the soil and hurry away in their 
efforts to escape a ducking. Our perky friend is near at 
hand in the low l)ranches of the neighbouring trees, and re- 
peatedly drops to secure one of them and back again into 
the tree, rarely returning to the same perch again. 
Sometimes another Dhayal bird comes along to have a 
share in the feast, and then we have a real -treat. The law- 
ful inhabitant of the garden allows no poachers to come into 
his own preserves, and he at once shows fight. The lust of 
bat,tle overcomes the desire for food, and down they both fly 
on to the grass, heads low, tails up, wings ready for action, 
and then at each other hammer and tongs, land away goes the 
poacher, back to his own reserve. 
When these conflicts occur in March or nearer the 
breeding season, if a hen bird happens to be on the scene, 
the two birds will keep in this attitude of challenge for sev- 
eral seconds, singing as they sing at no other time, pouring 
out floods of melody, quite equal to the Shama at his very 
best. Many a time have I stood entranced watching these' 
rival combats, and only regreitting that they were so soon 
pvier. 
The hen bird is a sombre edition of the male, being 
only a dark grey where he is black, and having the centjral 
tail feathers brown instead of black. As the rainy 
season approaches they begin to nest. Some pairs may 
try to nest in April or May, in North India, but in most 
of such cases the eggs would l>e clear, or if any young were 
hatched they would die before they were fledged. It seemed 
