A Bird Calendar for Northern India | Page 2

of the Five Rivers certain of the feathered folk which do not leave the United Provinces or Bengal: to wit, the purple sunbird, the bee-eater and, to a large extent, the king-crow.
The activity of the feathered folk is not at its height in January. Birds are warm-blooded creatures and they love not the cold. Comparatively few of them are in song, and still fewer nest, at this season.
Song and sound are expressions of energy. Birds have more vitality, more life in them than has any other class of organism. They are, therefore, the most noisy of beings.
Many of the calls of birds are purposeful, being used to express pleasure or anger, or to apprise members of a flock of one another's presence. Others appear to serve no useful end. These are simply the outpourings of superfluous energy, the expressions of the supreme happiness that perfect health engenders. Since the vigour of birds is greatest at the nesting season, it follows that that is the time when they are most vociferous. Some birds sing only at the breeding season, while others emit their cries at all times. Hence the avian choir in India, as in all other countries, is composed of two sets of vocalists--those who perform throughout the year, "the musicians of all times and places," and those who join the chorus only for a few weeks or months. The calls of the former class go far to create for India its characteristic atmosphere. To enumerate all such bird calls would be wearisome. For the purposes of this calendar it is necessary to describe only the common daily cries--the sounds that at all times and all seasons form the basis of the avian chorus.
From early dawn till nightfall the welkin rings with the harsh caw of the house-crow, the deeper note of the black crow or corby, the tinkling music of the bulbuls, the cheery keky, keky, kek, kek ... chur, chur, kok, kok, kok of the myna, the monotonous cuckoo-coo-coo of the spotted dove (Turtur suratensis), the soft subdued cuk-cuk-coo-coo-coo of the little brown dove (_T. cambayensis), the mechanical ku-ku--ku of the ring-dove (T. risorius_), the loud penetrating shrieks of the green parrot, the trumpet-like calls of the saras crane, the high-pitched did-he-do-it of the red-wattled lapwing, the wailing trill chee-hee-hee-hee hee--hee of the kite, the hard grating notes and the metallic coch-lee, coch-lee of the tree-pie; the sharp towee, towee, towee of the tailor-bird, the soft melodious cheeping calls of the flocks of little white-eyes, the chit, chit, chitter of the sparrow, the screaming cries of the golden-backed woodpecker, the screams and the trills of the white-breasted kingfisher, the curious harsh clamour of the cuckoo-shrike, and, last but by no means least, the sweet and cheerful whistling refrain of the fan-tail flycatcher, which at frequent intervals emanates from a tree in the garden or the mango tope. Nor is the bird choir altogether hushed during the hours of darkness. Throughout the year, more especially on moonlit nights, the shrieking kucha, kwachee, kwachee, kwachee, kwachee of the little spotted owlet disturbs the silences of the moon. Few nights pass on which the dusky horned owl fails to utter his grunting hoot, or the jungle owlet to emit his curious but not unpleasant turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, tukatu, chatuckatuckatuck.
The above are the commonest of the bird calls heard throughout the year. They form the basis of the avian melody in India. This melody is reinforced from time to time by the songs of those birds that may be termed the seasonal choristers. It is the presence or absence of the voices of these latter which imparts distinctive features to the minstrelsy of every month of the year.
In January the sprightly little metallic purple sunbird pours forth, from almost every tree or bush, his powerful song, which, were it a little less sharp, might easily be mistaken for that of a canary.
From every mango tope emanates a loud "Think of me ... Never to be." This is the call of the grey-headed flycatcher (_Culicicapa ceylonensis_), a bird that visits the plains of northern India every winter. In summer it retires to the Himalayas for nesting purposes. Still more melodious is the call of the wood-shrike, which is frequently heard at this season, and indeed during the greater part of the year.
Every now and again the green barbet emits his curious chuckling laugh, followed by a monotonous kutur, kutur, kuturuk. At rare intervals his cousin, the coppersmith, utters a soft wow and thereby reminds us that he is in the land of the living. These two species, more especially the latter, seem to dislike the cold weather. They revel in the heat; it is when the thermometer stands at something over 100 degrees in the shade that they feel like giants