Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/145

Rh to see it. Both this and the last fly like Starlings, straight and swiftly.

The best-known of all the tribe among bird-fanciers is the Bengal Myna, a big, rather coarse, glossy black bird, with an orange-yellow beak and two "ears" of bare yellow skin. But it is only a Bombay bird in the sense that it is never absent from the Crawford Market. Scarcely any bird in India is held in higher esteem as a talker, for it has a rich voice of great variety and compass and is really a clever mimic. A friend of mine came into possession of one which had taught itself the whole series of noises with which a Hindoo lets the world know that he is scouring his teeth and cleansing his mucous membranes generally, and it used to rehearse these in the morning. It had to be sent into exile till chotee hazree was over.

There is yet another bird which, though not usually called a Myna, must go with them. Unfortunately it lacks a good English name. Up-country it is commonly called the Jowaree Bird, for it is an incorrigible plunderer of ripening grain. Jerdon calls it the Rose-coloured Starling (Pastor roseus). This bird spends the sumrrier and brings up its family somewhere in Syria, or Mesopotamia, but almost before the rains are over it returns and overruns India in vast hordes, driving the farmer to despair. On the coast we know it best as the most rowdy habitue of the Coral Tree and the Silk-cotton Tree, already mentioned. These two trees, botanically so different, unite in filling a very curious place in the economy of nature. Soon after the monsoon is over they part with every leaf and stand