href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@46318@[email protected]#c34" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">XXXIV. The Rosy Starling 192

JUNGLE FOLK

I
OF INDIAN BIRDS IN GENERAL

Literary critics seem to be agreed that we who write about Indian birds form a definite school. “Phil Robinson,” they say, “furnished, thirty years ago, a charming model which all who have followed him in writing seem compelled to copy more or less closely.” Mr. W. H. Hudson remarks: “We grow used to look for funny books about animals from India, just as we look for sentimental natural history books from America.”

In a sense this criticism is well founded. Popular books on Indian ornithology resemble one another in that a ripple of humour runs through each. But the critics err when they attempt to explain this similarity by asserting that Anglo-Indian writers model themselves, consciously or unconsciously, on Phil Robinson, or that they imitate one another. The mistake made by the critics is excusable. When each successive writer discourses in the same peculiar style the obvious inference is that the later ones are guilty of more or less unconscious plagiarism. The majority of literary critics in England have not enjoyed the advantage of meeting our Indian birds in the flesh. To those who do possess this advantage it is clear that the Indian birds themselves are responsible for our writings being “funny.” We naturalists merely describe what we see. The avifauna of every country has a character of its own. Mr. John Burroughs has remarked that American birds as a whole are more gentle, more insipid than the feathered folk in the British Isles. Still greater is the contrast between English and Indian birds. The latter are to the former as wine is to water.

India is peculiarly rich in birds of character. It is the happy hunting-ground of that unique fowl, Corvus splendens—the splendid crow—splendid in sagacity, resource, adaptiveness, boldness, cunning, and depravity; a Machiavelli, a Shakespeare among birds, a super-bird. The king crow (Dicrurus ater) is another superlative. He is the Black Prince of the bird kingdom. He is the embodiment of pluck. The thing in feathers of which he is afraid has yet to be evolved. Like the mediæval knight, he goes about seeking those upon whom he can perform some small feat of arms.

When we turn to consider the more outward characteristics of birds, the peacock, the monal pheasant, the “blue jay,” the oriole, the white-breasted kingfisher, the sunbird, the little green bee-eater, and a host of others rise up before us. Of these some, showily resplendent, compel attention and admiration; others of quieter hues possess a beauty which cannot be appreciated unless they be held in the hand and each feather minutely examined. At the other extreme stands the superlative of hideousness, the ugliest bird in the world—Neophron ginginianus, the scavenger vulture. The bill, the naked face, and the legs of this creature are a sickly yellow. Its plumage is dirty white, with the exception of the ends of the wing feathers, which are shabby black. Its shape is displeasing to the eye, and its gait is an ungainly waddle. Yet even this fowl looks almost beautiful as it sails on outstretched pinions, high in the heaven. Between the extremely beautiful and the extremely ugly birds we meet with another class of superlatives—the extremely grotesque. This class is well represented in India. The great hornbill—Dichoceros bicornis—and the adjutant—Leptoptilus dubius—are birds which would take prizes in any exhibition of oddities. The former is nearly four and a half feet in length. The body is only fourteen inches long, being an insignificant part of the bird, a mere connecting link between the massive beak and the great, loosely inserted tail. The beak is nearly a foot in length, and is rendered more conspicuous than it would otherwise be by a structure known as the casque. This is a horny excrescence, nearly as large as the bill, which causes the bird to look as though it were wearing a hat which it had placed for a joke on its beak rather than on its head. The eye is red, and the upper lid is fringed with eyelashes, which add still further to the oddity of the bird’s appearance. The creature has an antediluvian air, and one feels when contemplating it that its proper companions are the monsters that lived in prehistoric times. The actions of the hornbill are in keeping with its appearance. It is the clown of the forest.

Even more grotesque is the adjutant. This is a stork with an enormous bill, a tiny head, and long neck, both innocent of feathers. From the front of the neck hangs a considerable pouch, which the bird can inflate at will. Round the base of the neck is a ruff of white feathers that causes the bird to look as though it had donned a lady’s feather boa. It is the habit of the adjutant to stand with its head buried in its shoulders, so that, when looked at from behind, it resembles a hunch-backed, shrivelled-up old man, wearing a grey swallow-tailed coat. It looks still more ludicrous when it varies the monotony of life by kneeling down; its long shanks are then stretched out before it, giving the idea that they have been mistakenly inserted hind part foremost! Its movements partake of the nature