Chapter IV: Preface (4)

Unlike most birds, swifts use their nests as houses and sleep in them at night. One frequently hears issuing from the rafters in the dead of night the piercing scream so characteristic of swifts. This disposes of the silly story, so prevalent, that at evening time the swifts mount into the higher layers of the atmosphere and there sleep on the wing.

In conclusion, I must mention the characteristic flight of swifts just before sundown. The birds close the day in what has been called “a jubilant rout”; as if they had not already taken sufficient exercise, they fly at a breakneck pace round about the building in which their nests are placed, dodging in and out of the pillars of the verandah, and fill the air with their shivering screams. This seems to be a characteristic of swifts wherever they are found.

BIRDS AS AUTOMATA

The sudden change that comes over the nature of most birds at the nesting season is, perhaps, the most wonderful phenomenon in nature. Active, restless birds, which normally spend the whole day on the wing, are content to sit motionless in a cramped position upon the nest for hours together. Birds of prey, whose nature it is to devour every helpless creature that comes within their grasp, behave most tenderly towards their young, actually disgorging swallowed food in order to provide them with a meal. Timid birds become bold. Those which under ordinary circumstances will not permit a human being to approach near them, will sometimes, while brooding, actually allow themselves to be lifted off the nest.

At the breeding season intelligence, which counsels self-preservation, gives way before the parental instinct, which causes birds to expose themselves to danger, and, in some cases, even to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their offspring.

From the construction of the nest until the time when the young ones are fledged the actions of the parent birds are, at any rate in the neighbourhood of the nest, those of automata, rather than of creatures endowed with intelligence.

On this hypothesis alone are many of the actions of nesting birds comprehensible.

That the construction of the nest is in the main an instinctive habit and not the result of intelligence is proved by the fact that a bird which has been hatched out in an incubator will, at the appointed season, build a nest. If birds were not guided by instinct they would never take the trouble to do such a quixotic thing. What benefit can they derive from laboriously collecting a number of twigs and weaving them into a nest?

It is, of course, natural selection that has originated this instinct; for those species in which the parental instinct is not developed, or in which there is not some substitute for it, must inevitably perish. When once this instinct has taken root natural selection will tend to perpetuate it, since those species which take the best care of their young are those which are likely to survive in the struggle for existence.

Many instances can be adduced to show how automatic are the actions of birds at the nesting season.

It sometimes happens that a bird lays an egg and then proceeds to build a nest on top of it.

Again, some birds do not know their own eggs. A whole clutch of different ones may be substituted for those upon which the bird is sitting and the bird will not discover the change.

The well-known bird-photographer, Mr. R. Kearton, was desirous of obtaining a good photograph of a sitting thrush, and as he was afraid that her eggs would be hatched before a fine, sunny day presented itself, had some wooden dummies made. These he painted and varnished to look like those of the thrush, and put them in the nest, wondering whether the bird would be deceived. He need not have wondered; she would probably have sat upon the shams even had they not been coloured.

Upon another occasion Mr. Kearton replaced some starling nestlings by his wooden eggs, and waited to see what would happen. “In a few minutes,” he writes, “back came the starling with a rush. She gazed in wonder at the contents of the nest for a few seconds, but, quickly making up her mind to accept the strangely altered condition of things, she sat down on the bits of painted wood without a trace of discontent in either look or action. Putting her off again, I reversed the order of things and waited. Upon returning, the starling stared in amazement at the change that had come over the scene during her absence; but her curiosity soon vanished, and she commenced to brood her chicks in the most matter-of-fact way.” Then Mr. Kearton took out the chicks and put his fist into the nest, so that the back of his hand was uppermost. The starling actually brooded his knuckles. We must, of course, remember that a starling’s nest is in a hole, where there is but little light. But, provided the starling could not see him, I believe that she would have brooded his knuckles in broad daylight.

Crows, the most intelligent of birds, will sit upon and try to hatch golf balls and ping-pong balls. One famous kite in Calcutta sat long and patiently in a vain attempt to make a pill-box yield a chick, while another member of this species subjected a hare’s skull to similar treatment. Upon one occasion I took a robin’s egg that was quite cold and placed it among the warm ones in a blackbird’s nest. The hen came and brooded the egg along with her own without appearing to notice the addition, although it was much smaller than her eggs and of a totally different colour.

In the same way, if a set of nestlings of another species be substituted for those already in the nest, the parent birds will usually feed the new family without noticing the change. Instinct teaches a bird to brood all inanimate objects it sees in the nest and to feed all living things, whether they be its own offspring or not, and many birds blindly obey this instinct. It is, of course, to the advantage of the species that this should be so. For it is only on very rare occasions that foreign objects get into a nest, and nature cannot provide for such remote contingencies.

Similarly, instinct will not allow a bird to pay any attention to objects outside the nest, even though these objects be the bird’s own offspring.

As everybody knows, the common cuckoo nestling ejects its foster-brethren from the nest, and if the true parents were able to appreciate what had happened, how much sorrow among its victims would the cuckoo cause! As a matter of fact, no sorrow at all is caused. Incredible as it may seem, the parent birds do not miss the young ones, nor do they appear to see them as they lie outside the nest. In this connection I cannot do better than quote Mr. W. H. Hudson, who was able to closely observe what happened when a young cuckoo had turned a baby robin out of the nest. “Here,” writes Hudson, “the young robin when ejected fell a distance of but five or six inches, and rested on a broad, light green leaf, where it was an exceedingly conspicuous object; and when the mother robin was on the nest—and at that stage she was on it the greater part of the time—warming that black-skinned, toad-like, spurious babe of hers, her bright, intelligent eyes were looking full at the other one, just beneath her, which she had grown in her body and had hatched with her warmth, and was her very own. I watched her for hours; watched her when warming the cuckoo, when she left the nest, and when she returned with food and warmed it again, and never once did she pay the least attention to the outcast lying there close to her. There on its green leaf it remained, growing colder by degrees, hour by hour, motionless, except when it lifted its head as if to receive food, then dropped it again, and when at intervals it twitched its body as if trying to move. During the evening even these slight motions ceased, though the feeblest flame of life was not yet extinct; but in the morning it was dead and cold and stiff; and just above it, her bright eyes upon it, the mother robin sat on the nest as before warming the cuckoo.”

Even those actions of nesting birds which appear to be most intelligent can be shown to be merely automatic. Take, for example, the curious habit of feigning injury, which some birds have, when an enemy approaches the young, in order to distract attention from them to itself and thus enable them to seek cover unobserved. This surely seems a highly intelligent act. But birds sometimes act thus before the eggs are hatched, and by so doing actually attract attention to the eggs. This action is purely instinctive, and is perpetuated and strengthened by natural selection because it is beneficial to the race.

We have seen how at the nesting season all a bird’s normal actions and instincts are subordinated to those of incubation. It is therefore but reasonable to suppose the incubating bird to be in a very peculiar and excitable state, a state bordering on insanity.

A bird in this condition might be expected to go into something resembling convulsions on the approach of an enemy, and, provided its acts under such circumstances tended to help the offspring to escape, and were at the same time not sufficiently acute to cause the mother bird to fall a victim to the enemy, natural selection would tend to perpetuate and fix such actions.

Want of space prevents further dilation upon this fascinating subject.

To sum up the conclusions I desire to emphasise. A bird has during the greater part of its life only to look after itself, and the more intelligent it be the better will it do this, hence natural selection tends to increase the intelligence of birds. But, at certain seasons, it becomes all-important to the species that the adults should attend to their young, even at risk to themselves. To secure this Nature has placed inside birds a force, dormant at most times, which at periodic intervals completely overrides all normal instincts, a force which compels parent birds to rivet their attention on the nest and its contents. Thus the sudden conversion of birds into automata is a necessity, not a mere whim of Dame Nature. The instinct is not of very long duration; for as soon as the young are able to fend for themselves, the parents sometimes behave in what seems to human beings a most unnatural way: they drive off their offspring by force. As a matter of fact, this behaviour is quite natural; it is dictated by Nature for the benefit of the species. Strong as the maternal instinct is, it is liable to be overridden by stronger instincts, such as that of migration. When the time for the migratory journey comes round, the parent birds will desert, without apparently a pang of remorse, or even a thought, the broods for whose welfare they have been slaving day and night. This desertion of later broods by migratory birds is far commoner than is generally supposed. In 1826 Mr. Blackwell inspected the house-martins’ nests under the eaves of a barn at Blakely after the autumnal migration of these birds. Of the twenty-two nests under the eaves inspected on 11th November, no fewer than thirteen were found to contain eggs and dead nestlings.

PLAYING CUCKOO

Ornithological experience led me some time back to the belief that at the nesting season a bird becomes a creature of instinct, an organism whose actions are, for the time being, those of a machine, a mere automaton. This view, which has been set forth in the preceding article, is not held by all naturalists. I therefore determined to undertake a systematic series of experiments with a view to putting it to the test. In other words, I decided to play cuckoo. I selected the Indian crow (_Corvus splendens_) as the subject of my experiments, because it is the most intelligent of the feathered folk. If it can be proved that when on the nest the actions of this bird are mechanical, it will follow that the less intelligent birds are likewise mere automata when incubating. Another reason for selecting the crow as my victim is that I have been investigating the habits of the koel (_Eudynamis honorata_), which is parasitic on the crow, and in so doing have had to visit a large number of crows’ nests.

The crow lays a pale blue egg blotched with brown, while the egg of the koel is a dull olive-green also blotched with brown. It is considerably smaller than the crow’s egg. I have seen dozens of koel’s eggs, but never one that a human being could possibly mistake for that of a crow, yet our friend _Corvus_ is unable to detect the strange egg when deposited in the nest and sits upon it. It is not that birds are colour-blind. The koel is able to distinguish its own egg from that of the crow, for, after it has deposited its egg, it frequently returns to the nest and removes one or more of the crow’s eggs! I am convinced that ordinarily a crow would have no difficulty in distinguishing between the two kinds of egg; but at the nesting time it throws most of its intelligence to the winds and becomes a puppet in the hands of its instincts, which are to sit upon everything in the nest.

I have myself placed koel’s eggs in crows’ nests, and in every case the crow has incubated the eggs. On one occasion I came upon a crow’s nest containing only two koel’s eggs. As the nest was some way from my bungalow and in an exposed situation, I knew that, the moment I left, it would be robbed by some mischievous native boy, so I took the eggs and placed them in a crow’s nest in my compound. This already contained three crow’s eggs, two of which I moved, substituting the koel’s eggs for them. The crow’s eggs had only been laid three or four days, but the koel’s eggs were nearly incubated, since both yielded chicks on the third day after I placed them in the nest. If nesting crows think, that pair must have been somewhat surprised at the speedy appearance of the chicks!

In all, I have placed six koel’s eggs in four different crow’s nests, and as I have already said, in no single instance did the trick appear to be detected. In the majority of cases, I did not trouble to keep the number of eggs in the nest constant. I merely added the koel’s egg to those already in the nest.

But I have put my theory to a much more severe test. In a certain crow’s nest containing two eggs I put a large fowl’s egg. This was cream-coloured and fully three times the size of the crow’s egg, yet within ten minutes the crow was sitting comfortably on the strange egg. She did not appear to notice the considerable addition to her clutch. She subsequently laid three more eggs, so that she had six eggs to sit upon, five of her own and the large fowl’s egg! Day after day I visited the nest and watched the progress of the strange egg. On the twentieth day the chick inside was moving, but when I went to the nest on the twenty-first day I discovered that some one had climbed the tree, for several branches were broken. Two young crows had been taken away and the fowl’s egg thrown upon the ground. There it lay with a fully formed black chicken inside! I have that chicken in a bottle of spirit. Subsequent inquiry showed that the _dhobi’s_ son had taken it upon himself to spoil my experiment. However, it went sufficiently far to prove that crows may one day become birds of economic value; why not employ them as incubators? Had the crow come across that chick’s egg anywhere but in its nest, it would undoubtedly have made its breakfast off it.

I repeated the experiment in another nest. This time the chick hatched out. When it appeared the rage of the crows knew no bounds. With angry squawks the scandalised birds attacked the unfortunate chick, and so viciously did they peck at it that it was in a dying state by the time my climber reached the nest.

With a view to determining at what stage the incubating instinct secures its dominance, I placed another fowl’s egg in a crow’s nest that was almost ready to receive eggs, wondering whether the presence of this egg would stimulate the crow to lay, without troubling to give the final touches to the nest. The bird devoured the egg. It is my belief that the acts of a nesting bird do not become completely automatic until it has laid an egg in the nest. If one visits a crow’s nest which is in course of construction, the owners will as likely as not desert it; but I have never known a crow desert its nest when once it has laid an egg—provided, of course, he who visits the nest leaves any eggs in it.

In another nest containing two crow’s eggs I placed a golf ball; on returning next day I found the crow sitting tight upon her own two eggs and the golf ball!

But in another case, where I had found two eggs and substituted for them a couple of golf balls, the crow refused to sit. I suppose the idea was, “I may be a bit of a fool when I am nesting, but I am not such a fool as all that!” I once came across a young koel and a crow’s egg in a nest. I removed the former and placed it in a crow’s nest containing four crow’s eggs. The owner of the nest showed no surprise at the sudden appearance of the koel, but set about feeding it in the most matter-of-fact way. The young koel was successfully reared; it is now at large and will next year victimise some crow. I may say that no human being could possibly fail to distinguish between a young koel and a young crow. When first hatched the koel has a black skin, the crow a pink one. The mouth of the crow nestling is an enormous triangle with great fleshy flaps at the side; the mouth of the koel is much smaller and lacks the flaps. The feathers arise very differently in each species, and whereas those of the crow are black, those of the koel are tipped with russet in the cock and white in the hen.

In another nest containing a young koel (put there by me) and two crow’s eggs, I placed a paddy bird’s (_Ardeola grayii_) egg, hoping that the gallant crow would hatch it out and appreciate the many-sidedness of her family. She hatched out the egg all right, at least I believe she did. I saw it in the nest the day before the young paddy bird was due; but when I visited the nest the following morning neither egg nor young bird was there. It would seem that the crow did not appreciate the appearance of the latest addition to the family and destroyed it. It is, of course, possible that the young koel declined to associate with such a neighbour and killed it; but I think that the crow was the culprit, for I had previously placed a paddy bird nestling, four days old, in a crow’s nest containing only young crows, and the paddy bird had similarly disappeared.

These, then, are the main facts which my game of cuckoo has brought to light. They are not so decisive as I had expected. They seem to indicate that the actions of birds with eggs or young are not quite so mechanical as I had supposed. Were they not largely mechanical a crow would never hatch out a koel’s egg, nor would it feed the young koel when hatched out; it would not incubate a fowl’s or a paddy bird’s egg, and it would assuredly decline to sit upon a golf ball. On the other hand, were the acts of nesting birds altogether mechanical, the young paddy birds would have been reared up, and the substitution of two golf balls for two eggs would not have been detected. There is apparently a limit to the extent to which intelligence is subservient to blind instinct.

THE KOEL

Anglo-Indians frequently confound the koel with the brain-fever bird. There is certainly some excuse for the mistake, for both are cuckoos and both exceedingly noisy creatures; but the cry of the koel (_Eudynamis honorata_) bears to that of the brain-fever bird or hawk-cuckoo (_Hierococcyx varius_) much the same relation as the melody of the organ-grinder does to that of a full German band. Most men are willing to offer either the solitary Italian or the Teutonic gang a penny to go into the next street, but, if forced to choose between them, select the organ-grinder as the lesser of the two evils. In the same way, most people find the fluty note of the koel less obnoxious than the shriek of the hawk-cuckoo.

The latter utters a treble note, which sounds like “Brain fever.” This it is never tired of repeating. It commences low down the musical scale and then ascends higher and higher until you think the bird must burst. But it never does burst. When the top note is reached the exercise is repeated.

The koel is a bird of many cries. As it does not, like the brain-fever bird, talk English, its notes are not easy to reproduce on paper. Its commonest call is a crescendo _kuil, kuil, kuil_, from which the bird derives its popular name. This cry is peculiar to the cock. The second note is, to use the words of Colonel Cunningham, “an outrageous torrent of shouts, sounding like _kūk, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū, kŭū_, repeated at brief intervals in tones loud enough to rouse the ‘Seven Sleepers.’” The koel is nothing if not impressive. He likes to utter this note just before dawn, when all the world is still. As the bird calls chiefly in the hot weather, when it frequently happens that the hour before sunrise is almost the only one in the twenty-four in which the jaded European can sleep, this note is productive of much evil language on the part of the aforesaid European.

The koel’s third cry is well described by Cunningham as a mere cataract of shrill shrieks—_heekaree, karees_. This is heard mostly when the hen is fleeing for dear life before a pair of outraged crows. So much for the voice of the koel, now for a description of the singer. The cock is a jet-black bird with a green bill and a red eye. The hen is speckled black and white, with the eye and beak as in the cock. Add to this the fact that the koel is a little larger than the “merry cuckoo, messenger of spring” which visits England, and it is impossible not to recognise the bird.

This cuckoo, like many of its relatives, does not hatch its own eggs. It cuckolds crows. This is no mean performance, for the crow is a suspicious creature. It knoweth full well the evil which is in its own heart, and so, judging others by itself, watches unceasingly over its nest from the time the first egg is deposited therein until the hour when the most backward young one is able to fly. Now, a koel is no match for a crow in open fight, hence it is quite useless for the former to attempt by means of force to introduce its egg into the crow’s nest. It is obliged to resort to guile. The cock entices away the crows, and while they are absent the hen deposits her egg.

Crows appear to dislike the cry of the koel quite as much as men do. But whereas man is usually content with swearing at the noisy cuckoo, crows attack it with beak and claw whenever an opportunity offers. This fact is turned to account by the koel. The cock alights in a tree near a crow’s nest and begins to call. The owners of the nest, sooner or later, “go for” him. He then takes to his wings, continuing to call, so as to induce the crows to prolong the chase. As he is a more rapid flier than they, he does not run much risk. While the irate corvi are in pursuit, the hen koel, who has been lurking around, slips into the nest and there lays her egg. If she is given time she destroys one or more of those already in the nest. She does this, not because the crows would detect the presence of an additional egg, but in order that her young, when hatched, will not be starved owing to the large number of mouths to feed.

Crows, although such clever birds, are, as we have seen, remarkably stupid at the nesting season. They are unable to distinguish the koel’s egg from their own, although the former is considerably smaller, with an olive-green background instead of a bluish one; and when the young koel emerges from the egg, they are unable to differentiate between it and their own offspring, although baby koels are black and baby crows pink, when first hatched out. The koel nestling has one point in common with young crows, and that is a large mouth of which the inside is red. This is opened wide whenever a parent approaches, so that the latter sees nothing but a number of yawning caverns; thus there is some excuse for its failure to distinguish between the true and the spurious nestlings.

To return to the koel who is laying her egg in the momentarily deserted nest. She does not carry her egg thither in her beak as the common cuckoo is said to do, but sits in the nest and lays it there. Sometimes the crows return before she is ready and, of course, attack her, but as she can fly faster than they, they do not often succeed in harming her, although there are instances on record of crows mobbing female koels to death. It will thus be seen that cuckolding crows is dangerous work. The life of the cuckoo is not all beer and skittles, and the birds seem to feel the danger of their existence, for at the breeding season they appear to be in a most excited state, and are manifestly afraid of the crows. This being so, I am inclined to think that the latter are responsible for the parasitic habit of the koel. It is not improbably a case of the biter bit. Crows are such aggressive birds that they are quite capable of evicting any other bird from its nest if this be large enough to suit their purpose. Now suppose a koel to be thus evicted by force when ready to lay; it is quite conceivable that she might make frantic efforts to lay in her rightful nest, and if she succeeded, and the crows failed to detect her egg, they would hatch out her offspring. If the koels which acted thus managed to have their offspring reared for them, while those that attempted to build fresh nests dropped their eggs before the new nurseries were ready, natural selection would tend to weed out the latter and thus the parasitic habit might arise, until eventually the koel came to forget how to build a nest.

In this connection it is important to bear in mind that the nearest relatives of the koel are non-parasitic. It is therefore not improbable that in the koel the parasitic habit has an independent origin.

This instinct has undoubtedly been evolved more than once. It does not necessarily follow that similar causes have led to its origin in each case.

The suggestion I have made is made only with reference to the koel, which differs from other cuckoos in that it dupes a bird stronger and bigger than itself. But this is a digression.

If the koel have time, she destroys one or more of the existing eggs, and will sometimes return later and destroy others. Although the crow cannot distinguish between her own and koel’s eggs, the koel can. I have come across several crows’ nests which each contained only two koel’s eggs.

The young koel is a better-behaved bird than some of its relations, for it ejects neither the eggs still in the nest when it is hatched nor its foster-brethren. But the incubating period of the koel is shorter than that of the crow, so that the koel’s egg is always the first to hatch out. The koel seems never to make the mistake of depositing its egg among nearly incubated ones. Thus the young koel commences life with a useful start on its foster-brethren. It soon increases this start, as it grows very fast, and is ready to fly before the earliest feathers of its foster-brothers are out of their sheaths.

It does not, however, leave its foster-parents when able to fly. It sits on the edge of the nest and makes laudable, if ludicrous, efforts at cawing. The crows continue feeding it long after it has left the nest, looking after it with the utmost solicitude. A young koel is somewhat lacking in intelligence; it seems unable to distinguish its foster-parents from any other crow, for it opens its mouth at the approach of every crow, evidently expecting to be fed.

The natives of the Punjab assert that the hen koel keeps her eye on the crow’s nest in which she has laid her egg or eggs during the whole of the time that the young cuckoo is in it, and takes charge of her babe after it leaves the nest. This assertion appears to be incorrect. I have never seen a koel feeding anything but itself. Moreover, the koel lays four or five eggs, and these are not usually all deposited in one nest. It would therefore be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for the hen to keep an eye on each of her eggs.

In view of the hatred which crows display towards koels in general, naturalists have expressed surprise that the young koels are not mobbed directly they leave the nest. Their plumage differs in no way from that of the adult. It has been suggested that young koels retain the crow smell for a considerable time after they are fledged. This I cannot accept. The olfactory organ of birds is but slightly developed. Indeed, I am inclined to wonder whether birds have any sense of smell. The truth of the matter is that crows look after their foster-children most carefully for several weeks after they have left the nest, and see that no strange crow harms them.

THE COMMON DOVE OF INDIA

The dove family ought to have become extinct ages ago, if all that orthodox zoologists tell us about the fierce struggle for existence be true. They form a regular “Thirteen Society.” They do everything they should not do, they disobey every rule of animal warfare, they fall asleep when sitting exposed on a telegraph wire, they build nests in all manner of foolish places, their nests are about as unsafe as a nursery can possibly be, and they flatly decline to lay protectively coloured eggs—their white eggs are a standing invitation to bird robbers to indulge, like the Cambridge crew of 1906, in an egg diet; yet, in spite all of these foolhardy acts, doves flourish like the green bay tree. This is a fact of which I require an explanation before I can accept all the doctrines of the Neo-Darwinian school.

There are so many species of dove in India that when speaking of them one must perforce, unless one be writing a great monograph, confine oneself to two or three of the common species. I propose to-day to talk about our three commonest Indian doves, that is to say, the spotted dove (_Turtur suratensis_), the Indian ring-dove (_Turtur risorius_), and the little brown dove (_Turtur cambayensis_). I make no apology for discoursing upon these common species. I contend that we in India know so very little about even our everyday birds that it is a needless expenditure of energy to seek out the rarer species and study their habits; we have plenty to learn about those that come into our verandahs and coo to us.

The curious distribution of our common Indian doves has not, so far as I know, been explained. In very few places are all three common. One or other of them is usually far more abundant than the others, and this one is usually the spotted dove. It is the commonest dove of Calcutta, of Madras, of Travancore, of Tirhoot, of Lucknow, but not of Lahore or Bombay or the Deccan. Why is this? Why is it that, whereas the Deccan is literally overrun by the ring- and the little brown dove, one can go from Bombay to Malabar without meeting one of these species, but seeing thousands of the spotted dove?

The only explanation that I can offer of this phenomenon is that the spotted dove is the most pugnacious and the most pushing; that where he chooses to settle down he ousts the other species of dove more or less completely; but he, fortunately for the other species, does not choose to settle down in all parts of India. He objects to dry places. Hence he is not seen at Lahore or in the Deccan, or in the drier parts of the United Provinces, such as Agra, Muttra, Etawah, and Cawnpore.

This is only a theory of mine, and a theory in favour of which I am not able to adduce very much evidence, since my personal knowledge of India is confined to some half-a-dozen widely separated places. Moreover, this theory does not explain the absence of the spotted dove from Bombay. I should be very glad to know if there are any other moist parts of India where the spotted dove is not the most abundant of the cooing family.

The nest of the dove is a subject over which most ornithologists have waxed sarcastic. A more ramshackle structure does not exist; yet the absurd thing is that doves are most particular about the materials they use.

The other day I watched, with much amusement, a little brown dove at work nest building. It was constructing a shake-down in a small Lonicera bush. Now, obviously, since the nest is just a few twigs and stalks thrown together, any kind of short twig or stem will serve for building material. This, however, was not the view of the dove. If that creature had been constructing the Forth Bridge it could not have been more particular as regards the materials it picked up. It strutted about the ground, taking into its bill all manner of material only to reject it, until at last it picked up a dead grass stalk and flew off with it in triumph!

Presumably doves take the same trouble in selecting a site for their nest, nevertheless they sometimes eventually choose the most impossible spot. Thus Mr. A. Anderson has recorded the existence of a nest of a pair of little brown doves that “was placed close to the fringe of the _kunnaut_ of his tent on one of the corner ropes, where it is double for some six inches and there knotted. The double portion was just broad enough, being three inches apart, to support the nest with careful balancing; the _knot_ acted as a sort of _buffer_ and prevented the twigs from sliding off, which most assuredly would otherwise have been the case, for the rope just there was at an angle of 45°.”

Those foolish birds were not permitted to bring up their young, because the tent had to be struck before the eggs were laid.

In Lahore a favourite nesting site for the little brown dove is on the top of the rolled-up portion of the verandah _chik_. As the _chik_ is composed of stout material, the rolled-up portion forms an excellent platform some four inches broad. But as the doves nest just as the weather is beginning to grow warm, the little home is apt to be somewhat rudely broken up. One pair, however, has this year successfully reared up two young hopefuls in a nest on this somewhat precarious site. The doings of these form the subject of the next article.

I once came across a nest of this little dove in a low, prickly bush beside a small canal distributory, three miles outside Lahore. The dove appeared to have used as the foundation for its nest an old one of the striated bush babbler (_Argya caudata_). (I object to calling this bird the common babbler, since, like common sense, it is not very common.) In the same bush, at the same level, that is to say, about a yard from the ground and only a couple of feet from the dove’s nest, was that of a striated bush babbler containing three dark blue eggs. This is a case upon which those who believe that eggs laid in open nests are protectively coloured would do well to ponder.

There, side by side, in precisely the same environment, were two nests—one containing white and the other dark blue eggs. Obviously both sets of eggs could not be protectively coloured; as a matter of fact, both clutches of eggs were conspicuous objects. It not infrequently happens that the Indian robin (_Thamnobia cambayensis_), which lays white eggs thickly spotted with reddish brown, brings up a family in a disused nest of a striated bush babbler’s. The eggs of this latter are dark blue. It is surely time that zoologists gave up throwing at us their everlasting theory of protective colouring. If this were a _sine qua non_ of the safety of birds’ eggs, then the whole dove tribe would, long ago, have ceased to exist.

This family presents the ornithologist with yet another problem in colouration. In every species, except the red turtle-dove (_Oenopopelia tranquebarica_), both sexes are coloured alike. In this latter, however, there is very pronounced sexual dimorphism. The ruddy wing feathers of the cock enable one to distinguish him at once from his mate and from every other dove. Now the habits of this dove appear to be exactly like those of all other species. It constructs the same kind of nest and in similar situations; why then the sexual dimorphism in this species and in no other species? If the lady rufous turtle-dove likes nice ruddy wings, and thus the red wing has been evolved in the cock bird, why has she too not inherited it? I presume that even the most audacious Neo-Darwinian will not talk about her greater need of protection when sitting on the nest, for if she needs protection, how much more so do her white eggs? Further, it is my belief that the cock bird takes his turn in the incubation.

It must not be thought that I am needlessly poking fun at modern biologists. I merely desire to call attention to the unsolved problems that confront us on all sides, and to protest against the dogmatism of biology which declares that the Darwinian theory explains the whole of organic nature. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that the field naturalist cannot but feel that natural selection is turning out rather a failure.

In conclusion, one more word regarding the red turtle-dove. Its distribution has not been carefully worked out, and what we do know of it is not easy to explain. Hume says that it breeds in all parts of India, but is very capriciously distributed, and he is unable to say what kind of country it prefers, and why it is common in one district and rare in a neighbouring one in which all physical conditions appear identical.

It is very common in the bare, arid, treeless region that surrounds the Sambhur Lake. It is common in some dry, well-cultivated districts, like Etawah, where there are plenty of old mango groves. It is very common in some of the comparatively humid tracts, like Bareilly, and again in the _sal_ jungles of the Kumaun _Bhabar_ and the Nepal _Terai_. On the other hand, over wide extents of similar country it is scarcely to be seen. Doubtless there is something in its food or manner of life that limits its distribution, but no one has yet been able to make out what this something is.

DOVES IN A VERANDAH

The office building in which for some time past I have rendered service to a paternal government was once a tomb. That it is now an office is evidence of the strict economy practised by the Indian Administration. Since the living require more light than the dead, skylights have been let into the domed roof. In these the brown rock-chat (_Cercomela fusca_) loves to sit and pour forth his exceedingly sweet little lay, while his spouse sits on four pale blue eggs in a nest on a ledge in a neighbouring sepulchre. But it is not of this bird that I write to-day; I hope to give him an innings at some future date.

Two little brown doves (_Turtur cambaiensis_) first demand our attention, since these for a time appropriated my skylights. This species is smaller than the spotted dove so common in Madras, and, to my way of thinking, is a much more beautiful bird. Its head, neck, and breast are pale lilac washed with red. On each side of the neck the bird carries a miniature chessboard. The remainder of its plumage is brown, passing into grey and white. The legs are lake-red.

It has a very distinctive note—a soft, subdued musical _cuk-cuk-coo-coo-coo_. There is no bird better pleased with itself than the little brown dove. In the month of March the two doves in question were “carrying on” in my office skylight to such an extent as to leave no doubt that they had a nest somewhere. I discovered it on the rolled-up end of one of the bamboo verandah _chiks_. These are not let down in the cold weather, so that the doves had been permitted to build undisturbed.

“Eha” has humorously described a dove’s nest as composed of two short sticks and a long one; that of the little brown dove is a little more compact than the typical nest, a little less sketchy, and composed of grass and fine twigs. There was plenty of room for it on the top of the rolled-up portion of the _chik_.

When I found the nest there were two white eggs in it. Every species of dove lays but two eggs. I do not know whether the smallness of the clutch has anything to do with the helplessness of the young birds when first hatched. Young doves and pigeons have not, like other baby birds, great mouths which open to an alarming extent. They feed by putting their beaks in the mouth of the parent and there they obtain “pigeon’s milk,” which is a secretion from the crop of the old birds.

Being at that time less versed in the ways of the little brown dove than I now am, I was under the impression that this nest was in rather a curious situation, so I determined to obtain a photograph of it with the young birds. I may here say that I dislike photography, and not without cause. Some years ago I visited the Himalayan snows, and dragged up a great camera and a number of plates to an altitude of 12,000 feet. Having no portable dark room, I endured untold agonies while changing the plates under the bedclothes. Being anxious lest the light should reach the exposed negatives, I wrapped them up very carefully, using newspaper, which was the only wrapping available. When I returned from the expedition I developed the plates, but lo and behold! instead of snowy peaks and sunny valleys, advertisements of soaps and pills appeared on the plates. Why do not books on the camera tell one not to wrap up plates in newspaper? I made a vow to leave photography to others, and I kept the vow until I saw those young doves perched so temptingly on the _chik_.

Having risked both life and limb in mounting a chair placed upon a table, I obtained a “snap” at the nest. On developing the plate everything appeared with admirable clearness except the nest. There was nothing but a blur where this should have been; the rest of the _chik_ came out splendidly. The only explanation of this phenomenon that I can offer is the natural “cussedness” of the camera. I have now renewed my vow to eschew photography.

The first young doves were successfully reared. No sooner had they been driven forth into the world than the parents set about repairing the nest, for doves are not content with one brood; when once a pair commence nesting there is no knowing when they will stop. As it was then April and the sun was growing uncomfortably hot, the letting down of the _chik_ became a matter of necessity, and this, of course, wrecked the nest. I expected to see no more of the doves. In this I was mistaken. Before long they were billing and cooing as merrily as before. A little search showed that this time they had built a nest on the top of the same _chik_—a feat which I should have thought impossible had I not seen the nest with my own eyes. Some sacking was attached to the _chik_, and this, together with the bamboo, presented a surface of about half an inch. On this precarious foundation the nest rested; the twigs, of course, reached over to the wall from which the _chik_ was hung. Thus the nest received some additional support. Needless to say, the young birds had to remain very still or they would have fallen out of the nest.

The second and the third broods were raised without mishap. One of the birds of the fourth family was more restless than his brethren had been; consequently he fell off the nest on to the floor of the verandah. He was picked up and brought to me. Although not strong enough to walk, or even stand, he showed unmistakable signs of that evil temper which characterises all doves, by opening his wings and pecking savagely at my hand. In spite of this behaviour I set natural selection at naught by putting him back into the nest. He fell out again next day and was again replaced. This time he stayed there, and is now probably at large.

When the fifth clutch of eggs was in the nest my _chaprassi_, who, since I have shown him how to play cuckoo, has been upsetting the domestic affairs of any number of birds, asked whether he might substitute two pigeon’s eggs for those laid by the dove. The substitution was duly effected without rousing any suspicions on the part of the doves. The young pigeons soon hatched out and were industriously fed by their foster-parents, nor did these latter appear to notice anything unusual when the white plumage of the pigeons appeared. Two days before the changelings were ready to fly a terrific storm arose and so shook the _chiks_ that the poor pigeons were thrown off and killed. Nothing daunted, the doves have since successfully reared a sixth family! Can we wonder that doves are numerous in India?

THE GOLDEN ORIOLE

Dame Nature must have been in a very generous mood when she manufactured golden orioles, or she would never have expended so much of her colour-box upon them. Orioles are birds which compel our attention, so brilliant are they; yet the poets who profess to be the high-priests of Nature give us no songs about these beautiful creatures; at least I know of no maker of verse, with the exception of Sir Edwin Arnold, who does more than mention the oriole. Here then is a fine opening for some twentieth-century bard!

Two orioles, or mango birds as they are sometimes called, are common in India. They are the Indian oriole (_Oriolus kundoo_) and the black-headed oriole (_O. melanocephalus_). The Indian oriole is a bird about the size of a starling. The plumage of the cock is a splendid rich yellow. There is a black patch over and behind the eye. There is some black on the tail, and the large wing feathers are also of this colour. The bill is pink and the eyes red. In the hen the yellow of the back is deeply tinged with green.

The black-headed oriole may be distinguished by his black head, throat, and upper breast. The habits of both species are similar in every respect. The Indian oriole seems to be merely a winter visitor to Madras, and it is seen in the Punjab only during the hot weather. In the intervening parts it may be observed all the year round; hence the species would appear to perform a small annual migration, leaving the South in the hot weather. In those parts where orioles are found all the year round it is not improbable that the birds one sees in the winter are not those that are observed during the summer.

The oriole is essentially a bird of the greenwood tree; if you would see him you should betake yourself to some well-irrigated orchard. I have never seen an oriole on the ground; its habits are strictly arboreal, but it does not seem to be at all particular about taking cover. It perches by preference on the topmost bough of a tree, and if this bough be devoid of leaves, so much the better, for the bird enjoys a more extensive view of the surrounding country. Very beautiful does such a bird look, sitting outlined against the sky, as the first rays of the morning sun fall upon and add fresh lustre to its golden plumage. Orioles feed upon both fruit and insects, and so cannot be regarded as unmixed blessings to the agriculturalist.

As I have already said, Dame Nature has been exceedingly kind to this bird; not content with decking him out in brilliantly coloured raiment, she has endowed him with a voice of which any bird might well be proud. It is a clear, mellow whistle, which is usually syllabised as _peeho, peeho_, or _lorio, lorio_; indeed, the name oriole is probably onomatopoetic. In addition to this the bird has several other notes. These are not pleasant to the ear and may be described as blends, in varying proportions, of the harsh call of the king-crow and the _miau_ of a cat. The hen almost invariably utters such a note when a human being approaches the nest; but the cry apparently does not always denote alarm, for I have heard an oriole uttering it when sitting placidly in a tree, seemingly at peace with all the world; but perhaps that particular bird may have been indulging in unpleasant day dreams; who knows?

We hear much of the marvellous nests of tailor- and weaver-birds, but never of that of the oriole. Naturalists, equally with poets, have neglected this beautiful species. An oriole’s nest is in its way quite as wonderful as that of the tailor-bird. If a man were ordered to erect a cradle up in a tree, he would, I imagine, construct it precisely as the oriole does its nest. This last is a cup-shaped structure slung on to two or three branches of a tree by means of fibres which are wound first round one branch, then passed under the nest, and finally wound round another bough. The nest is therefore, as Hume pointed out, secured to its supporting branches in much the same way as a prawn net is to its wooden framework.

In places where there are mulberry trees the oriole shaves off narrow strips of the thin, pliable bark and uses these to support the nest. Jerdon describes one wonderful nest, taken by him at Saugor, that was suspended by a long roll of cloth about three-quarters of an inch wide, which the bird must have pilfered from some neighbouring verandah. “This strip,” he states, “was wound round each limb of the fork, then passed round the nest beneath, fixed to the other limb, and again brought round the nest to the opposite side; there were four or five of these supports on either side.” The nest was so securely fixed that it could not have been removed till the supporting bands had been cut or had rotted away. Here then is an example of workmanship which the modern jerry-builder might well emulate.