Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/143

Rh ground with its beak and bobs its head. What the exercise means is more than I can tell. It is so hard to understand a bird. A caged Myna lightens its captivity by practising all the sounds which it hears. But it is not necessary to cage a tame Myna. If you get it young enough it will become a member of the family and live about the house like the cat. Mynas make their nests in holes and lay four or five blue eggs. They have two or three broods in the year, generally in the monsoon, when grasshoppers are cheap and plentiful. In the jungles they will appropriate holes made by woodpeckers and barbets, or find hollows in rotten boughs, but in a town there are always enough of suitable holes to be had in walls and roofs. They do not build in chimneys like Starlings, because there are no chimneys.

There is another species of Myna called by Jerdon Acridotheres fuscus, the Dusky Myna, which is so like the common one that it is not usually distinguished, except by naturalists, but if you get a near view of it you may recognise it at once by a little tuft, or crest, not on the crown of its head, where birds generally wear their crests, but on the bridge of its nose. It also wants the little patch of yellow skin behind the eye, and its general hue is more dusky. This is more of a jungle bird than the other, and therefore avoids Bombay, but it is common enough on the other side of the harbour. The pale Bank Myna (Acridotheres ginginianus), so common in Guzerat, is not found here.

Next we have some charming birds belonging to another branch of the Myna family. They are smaller and daintier birds than the Common Myna, and