Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/123

Rh before I was out of bed next morning the bird had noticed it and was carrying off large beak-fulls. He practised a certain amount of guile, but was easily tracked to a low, dense bush in the garden, where, with such charitable assistance, he did not take long to make his wife a very cosy house. It may encourage others in doing good to know that in due course a fine family was reared and sent out into the world in spite of the crows.

The Tailor Bird is green, or greenish-brown, on the upper parts, with a golden tinge on the forehead. The under parts are white. When the neck is stretched, a narrow dark mark appears on each side of it, as if the bird had been trying to cut its throat. In figure and gait it is very like the Jenny Wren at home, but, instead of the apologetic stump which that bird holds up behind, it has a long and elegant tail, with the two centre feathers prolonged beyond the rest. It is no musician, but has a remarkably loud and clear voice, and is constantly saying towhit, towhit, towhit, or else towhtee, towhtee, towhtee.

There is another kind of Tailor Bird, which Jerdon calls the Dark Ashy Wren Warbler (Prinia socialis). It is remarkable for laying red eggs. They are meant to be thickly spotted with red on a white ground, but often the spots are so thick that there is no ground colour left. This bird is larger and has a longer tail than the other, and is of a dark, ashy-brown on the upper parts. The under parts are buffy, or reddish-white, and the two colours, dark and light, are sharply separated on the sides of the neck. This is the feature by which I recognise the bird most casilv. It is not nearly so common in