Chapter XXXVI: A Bird of the Open Plain

It is the fashion for modern writers of books on ornithology to divide birds according to the localities they frequent, into birds of the garden, birds of the wood, birds of the meadow, birds of the waterside, etc. The chief drawback to such a system of classification, which is intended to simplify identification, is that most birds decline to limit themselves to any particular locality.

There are, however, some species which are so constant in their habits as to render it possible to lay down the law regarding them and to assert with confidence where they will be found. Of such are the finch-larks. I have never seen a finch-lark anywhere but on an open uncultivated plain or in fields that happen to be devoid of crops.

Any person living in India may be tolerably certain of making the acquaintance of the ashy-crowned finch-lark (_Pyrrhulauda grisea_) by repairing to the nearest open space outside municipal limits.

The finch-lark is a dumpy, short-tailed bird, considerably smaller than a sparrow. Having no bright colours in its plumage, it is not much to look at, but it makes up by its powers of flight for that which it lacks in form and colour.

The finch-larks found in India fall into two genera, each of which is composed of two species.

The commonest species is that mentioned above—the ashy-crowned or, as Jerdon calls it, the black-bellied finch-lark.

In the genus _Pyrrhulauda_ the sexes differ much in appearance, while in the allied genus, _Ammomanes_, the cock is indistinguishable from the hen.

As the habits of these two genera are alike in all respects, they afford an instance of the futility of attempting, as some do, to account for the phenomenon of sexual dimorphism by alleging that the habits of the dimorphic species differ from those of the monomorphic species. When species A lives in the same locality as species B, nests at the same season, builds the same kind of nest, and when both feed and fly in the same manner, it should be obvious to every person not obsessed by a pet theory that natural selection cannot have had much to do with the fact that, whereas in species A the sexes are alike, in species B they differ. But, as we shall see, finch-larks would almost seem to have been created expressly to upset present-day zoological theories.

Well might one say to the indoor naturalist, who sits in his chair and theorises, “Go to the finch-lark, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise.”

The cock _Pyrrhulauda grisea_ is an ash-coloured bird with a short brown tail, and very dark brown, practically black, chin, breast, and abdomen. The cheeks are whitish, as are the sides of the body; but these are separated by a black bar, so that the bird has stamped on its breast a black cross. There is also a black or very dark brown bar that runs from the chin through the eye. The hen is an earthy-brown bird, the plumage being tinged with grey above and reddish below. There is nothing peculiar in her colouring. But for her size, she might pass for a hen sparrow. The colouring of the cock, however, is very remarkable. Almost every bird in existence, which is not uniformly coloured, is of a much lighter hue below than above. In the cock finch-lark this relation is reversed. I cannot call to mind any other Indian bird, unless it be the cock brown-backed robin (_Thamnobia cambaiensis_), in which this phenomenon occurs. Moreover, the arrangement of colour—dark above and pale below—is not confined to birds, but runs through nearly the whole of the animal kingdom. So much so that Mr. Thayer asserts that the phenomenon is a striking example of protective colouration. The fact that a bird or mammal is darker in hue above than below renders it less conspicuous than it would be were it coloured alike all over, since the pale under parts tend to counteract the effects of light and shade. A few creatures, as, for example, the skunk in America, are darker below than above. These are usually cited as examples of warning colouration. The skunk, as everyone knows, is able when attacked to eject a very fœtid and blinding excretion, so that very few animals prey upon it. Consequently, the light-coloured back and the erect tail are supposed to act as danger signals to its fellow-creatures. However, there are a number of nocturnal mammals, such as our Indian ratel (_Mellivora indica_), of which the fur is light-coloured above and dark below. These cannot be examples of warning colouration. The same must be said of the inoffensive little finch-lark, with its dark under parts.

The fact that there exist so few creatures of which the under parts are of darker hue than the upper parts must, I think, be attributed to two causes. The first is that few species ever vary in that manner; the tendency is all the other way. The second is that such rare variations, when they do occur, are in most cases not conducive to the welfare of the individual, since they tend to make it conspicuous to its foes or its quarry. In certain cases, however, as in that of creatures like the shunk, which are not preyed upon, or that of nocturnal animals, the possession of dark under parts does not affect the chances of the possessor in the struggle for existence. So this variation has not been eliminated by natural selection. This, I believe, is the case with the finch-lark. The bird has very short legs, so that when it is on the ground its black under parts are scarcely visible even to a human being walking on the ground, and certainly would not be seen by a bird of prey flying overhead. My experience is that the cock finch-lark is not more conspicuous than the hen. Both, when they alight on a ploughed field, are lost to human sight until they move.

I believe finch-larks feed exclusively on the ground. I have not seen one perch in a tree. What they live upon I do not know. The books do not tell us, and I have never had the heart to shoot one of these small birds in order to find out. But whatever their food consists of, the search for it leaves finch-larks plenty of leisure, much of which they spend after the manner of the skylark clan. Suddenly one of these birds will jump into the air, and rise almost perpendicularly by vigorous flappings of its powerful little wings. Having reached an altitude of from twenty to forty feet, its habit is to close its pinions and drop, head foremost, like a stone. Just before it reaches the ground, it checks its flight and again soars upwards. Often while disporting themselves in the air these birds display strange antics, twisting and turning about much as the common fly does. After amusing themselves for some time in this manner, the pair will take to their wings in real earnest, and fly off to a spot a quarter of a mile or more away, and there drop to the ground and begin feeding.

Finch-larks, like skylarks, nest on the ground. According to Hume, they have two broods, one in February or March, and the other in July or August. The nest, which consists of a small pad of dried grass and fibres, is usually placed in some depression on the ground; a hoof-print is considered an especially suitable site. As the bird sits very close, the nest is not easy to find. But when flushed the hen generally flies straight off the nest without first running along the ground; thus, if the spot from which the bird gets up be carefully marked, the nest ought to be found without much difficulty.

Finch-larks sometimes entertain queer notions as to what constitutes a desirable nesting site. At Futtehgarh Mr. A. Anderson once found a nest “in the centre of a lump of cow-dung, which must have been quite fresh when some cow or bullock ‘put its foot in it.’” “As the foot-print,” writes Mr. Anderson, “had not gone right through to the ground, I was enabled to remove the lump of dung without in any way hurting the nest. White ants had left their marks all over the dry dung, so that detection was almost impossible: it was altogether the most artfully concealed nest I have ever seen.” Scarcely less objectionable, from the human point of view, was the site of the finch-lark’s nest found at Etawah by Hume, namely, on the railway line, amongst the ballast between the rails. “When we think,” says Hume, “of the terrible heat glowing from the bottom of the engine, the perpetual dusting out of red-hot cinders, it seems marvellous how the bird could have maintained her situation.” Verily, there is no accounting for taste! Two eggs are laid, which are like miniature lark’s eggs.

The other species of finch-lark found in South India is _Ammomanes phœnicura_, the rufous-tailed finch-lark. This, as its name indicates, has a reddish tail. The rest of the plumage is brown. The sexes are alike. Its habits are those of the ashy-crowned species. I have not observed it in the vicinity of Madras.