A Bird Calendar for Northern India | Page 8

kingfisher (Ceryle rudis). This is the familiar, black-and-white

bird that fishes by hovering kestrel-like on rapidly-vibrating wings and
then dropping from a height of some twenty feet into the water below;
it is a bird greatly addicted to goldfish and makes sad havoc of these
where they are exposed in ornamental ponds. The nest of the pied
kingfisher is a circular tunnel or burrow, more than a yard in length,
excavated in a river bank. The burrow, which is dug out by the bird, is
about three inches in diameter and terminates in a larger chamber in
which the eggs are laid.
Another spotted black-and-white bird which now begins nesting
operations is the yellow-fronted pied woodpecker (_Liopicus
mahrattensis_)--a species only a little less common than the beautiful
golden-backed woodpecker. Like all the Picidae this bird nests in the
trunk or a branch of a tree. Selecting a part of a tree which is
decayed--sometimes a portion of the bole quite close to the ground--the
woodpecker hews out with its chisel-like beak a neat circular tunnel
leading to the cavity in the decayed wood in which the eggs will be
deposited. The tap, tap, tap of the bill as it cuts into the wood serves to
guide the observer to the spot where the woodpecker, with legs apart
and tail adpressed to the tree, is at work. In the same way a barbet's nest,
while under construction, may be located with ease. A woodpecker
when excavating its nest will often allow a human being to approach
sufficiently dose to witness it throw over its shoulder the chips of wood
it has cut away with its bill.
In the United Provinces many of the ashy-crowned finch-larks
(Pyrrhulauda grisea) build their nests during February. In the Punjab
they breed later; April and May being the months in which their eggs
are most often found in that province. These curious squat-figured little
birds are rendered easy of recognition by the unusual scheme of
colouring displayed by the cock--his upper parts are earthy grey and his
lower plumage is black.
The habit of the finch-lark is to soar to a little height and then drop to
the ground, with wings closed, singing as it descends. It invariably
affects open plains. There are very few tracts of treeless land in India
which are not tenanted by finch-larks. The nest is a mere pad of grass

and feathers placed on the ground in a tussock of grass, beside a clod of
earth, or in a depression, such as a hoof-print. The most expeditious
way of finding nests of these birds in places where they are abundant is
to walk with a line of beaters over a tract of fallow land and mark
carefully the spots from which the birds rise.
With February the nesting season of the barn-owls (Strix flammea)
begins in the United Provinces, where their eggs have been taken as
early as the 17th.
Towards the end of the month the white-browed fantail flycatchers
(Rhipidura albifrontata) begin to nest. The loud and cheerful song of
this little feathered exquisite is a tune of six or seven notes that ascend
and descend the musical scale. It is one of the most familiar of the
sounds that gladden the Indian countryside. The broad white eyebrow
and the manner in which, with drooping wings and tail spread into a fan,
this flycatcher waltzes and pirouettes among the branches of a tree
render it unmistakable. The nest is a dainty little cup, covered with
cobweb, attached to one of the lower boughs of a tree. So small is the
nursery that sometimes the incubating bird looks as though it were
sitting across a branch. This species appears to rear two broods every
year. The first comes into existence in March or late February in the
United Provinces and five or six weeks later in the Punjab; the second
brood emerges during the monsoon.
The white-eyed buzzards--weakest of all the birds of prey--begin to
pair towards the end of the month. At this season they frequently rise
high above the earth and soar, emitting plaintive cries.
The handsome, but destructive, green parrots are now seeking, or
making, cavities in trees or buildings in which to deposit their white
eggs.
The breeding season for the alexandrine (Palaeornis eupatrius) and the
rose-ringed paroquet (P. torquatus) begins at the end of January or
early in February. March is the month in which most eggs are taken.
In April and May the bird-catchers go round and collect the nestlings in

order to sell them at four annas apiece. Green parrots are the most
popular cage birds in India. Destructive though they be and a scourge to
the husbandman, one cannot but pity the luckless captives doomed to
spend practically the whole of their existence in small iron