Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/124

108 Bombay as the true Tailor Bird. As a tailor, ladies say it is not such a neat worker.

Another species which is everywhere in Bombay is the one which Jerdon calls the Common Wren Warbler (Drymoipus inornatus). Its scientific name is a happy one. "Inornate" describes the bird in a word. It is a typical member of the group, a tiny, dingy, homely, long-tailed bird, with nothing striking about it. Jefferies' account of the song fits it exactly. It is not a tailor, but it constructs a very ingenious and beautiful nest, woven of fine grass and worked into three or four high reeds, or stems of upright shrubs. The nest is always well concealed by foliage, but after the monsoon, when the leaves have fallen, it comes into view. Old nests of this kind are often to be seen in Bombay. There are few prettier eggs than those of this unornamented bird. They are of a pale blue-green colour, thickly marked at the larger end with spots and blotches and fine lines of chocolate-brown. There are four or five of them.

The Tree Warblers differ from the Wren Warblers in this, that they pass their lives in trees and not among grass and low bushes. There are other differences too. The Wren Warbler is flimsy and feeble, loose-jointed and fluffy-feathered, encumbered with a long pendulous tail and fitted with little wings that just serve to carry it in a jerky way from bush to bush. The Tree Warbler is a shapely bird, slim but firm, wiry, athletic, with a well-proportioned tail and wings that will, when the season arrives, take it from continent to continent. For all our Tree Warblers are foreigners. One of the commonest makes its nest in Sind, but others go to the Himalayas or