Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/239

Rh and hotter during the rest of the year, and the coppersmith is in full song all the year round.

A bird that was always with us was the green parrakeet. Flocks of them came bustling into the branches of the tamarind trees overhead with whistling skrieks, like a parcel of schoolboys just escaped from school. After raiding the fruit they left as abruptly as they came, flying off helter-skelter to their next playground with a chorus of screams.

Over the beds and among the grass of the compound hopped quiet little birds of an unassuming greyish brown tint, the babblers, or, as they are better known to Europeans, the seven sisters. They chirruped and twittered as they poked about for food, far too busy to find time for a song. I could never get near them. Although apparently absorbed in their search for ‘poochees,' there was purpose in that continuous hopping, and a respectful distance was maintained between themselves and the too curious stranger.

The mynas and the crows remained near the house for reasons of their own, chiefly connected with their commissariat. Among the crows I thought I distinguished the rook. Without his elm-tree he is an undignified degraded bird, with a mind given over entirely to the flesh-pots of the verandah. There is an Indian saying that a good Hindu wife should be like a crow. The unscrupulousness of the hen crow in her maternal solicitude qualifies that virtue. She is an incorrigible thief, bold, impudent, and utterly unashamed, and it is difficult to forgive her her sins on the strength of her being a good mother. The caw of the crow is strangely familiar to the newly arrived exile. Twining, in his diary of ‘Travels a Hundred Years Ago,' relates how he landed at Madras (1792) and walked into the fort to the office of Mr. Parry. He had to wait for the arrival of that gentleman from his