Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/195

Rh almost as soon as they are hatched, like chickens. In this respect they resemble Plovers and all the waterfowl which we have been considering hitherto. Storks and Herons, on the other hand, build their nests on trees, and the young are at first naked and helpless, like young crows or sparrows. To my mind this is a very important difference, entailing greater parental responsibility and implying higher intelligence.

In modern systems these birds are rightly classed in a different order from the Cranes, and though Jerdon put them in the same order, he separated them by a wide interval. The difference between Storks and Herons is not so great nor so easily explained. The Storks are heavier birds, with large and clumsy bills; but the most obvious outward sign by which they may be known from one another is this, that when a Stork flies, it holds its neck out straight and stiff, and looks like a man carrying his hat on the point of his walking stick; while the Heron doubles back its more flexible neck and rests its head between its shoulders.

The great Sarus, the Common Crane and the beautiful and savoury Demoiselle, or Kullum of sportsmen, are very familiar birds in Guzerat and the north of India; but I have never seen them, or heard of their occurrence, on this coast, except during last cold season, when the famine in Guzerat forced them to wander in search of water. Of Storks there are several species which may be met with up the creeks, and the well-known Adjutant, the Goliath of the whole Stork tribe, consorts with the Vultures at the Towers of Silence, as I learned recently from the veracious sketches of a well-known "special artist"