Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/148

132 little bird, about the size of a sparrow and marked very like a sparrow. It easily passes for a sparrow and does not care, but on a near view the two are easily distinguished, for a sparrow is grey and brown, whereas the prevailing tone of a Weaver Bird is yellow. Its underparts are all of a dull yellow tint, and the feathers of the back and wings are bordered with brownish-yellow. Its very bill is yellow. As the hot season advances the male gets itself a wedding suit, in which, I confess, it is rather a dandy. The crown of its head and its breast then become bright yellow and its face becomes black. But it resumes its humble, workaday costume at the end of the rains.

Weaver Birds are more than sociable. They not only feed together in large numbers and sleep together in thousands among the mangroves that border all our large creeks, but they like to make their nests and bring up their young in company. At that time they become especially jovial and noisy. The books all say that the Weaver Bird has no song, and I will not maintain that its voice is musical, or that it makes any pretence to be a soloist; but it is grand at a chorus. When a glorious company of Weaver Birds join in song, the likeness to an after-dinner performance of "He's a Jolly Good Fellow" is most striking. Or sometimes I compare it to a party of British soldiers returning home from a festive meeting, whom the spirit of patriotism makes vocal.

To come to those wonderful nests. The birds usually begin operations in July or August. They are whimsical in the choice of a site. One essential condition is that the nest must hang from the end of a drooping