Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/32

16 that easy, undulating motion, which glides down a street, tops a house, dips into a lane, rounds a corner, all with the same effortless grace. There is more steering required for these evolutions than for the circling of a vulture, hence the Kite carries an expansive, forked tail, a kind of twin helm, which it manages with a skill that is perfectly beautiful. All the while you may see its head turning this way and that, as it scans every corner with its keen eyes for anything that may be "lifted." It does not insist that life shall be extinct. Any bird or little animal which is sickly, wounded, or young enough to be picked off the ground with a swoop, is welcome. Chicks not over a month old are particularly eligible, as everybody knows to his sorrow who has tried to keep poultry in India. When a Kite becomes a confirmed chicken-eater there is nothing to be done but to shoot it, which is a pity, for they deserve to be protected. The quantity of dead rats, scraps of offal, and other refuse which they remove from our streets and the precincts of our outhouses in the course of the year, must be enormous. The Crows offer their services for the same work, and I would not underrate their usefulness, but a Crow sitting down to breakfast on a dead bandicoot in the middle of the street is itself an offence. The Kite removes the nuisance, and what it does with it afterwards is no concern of ours.

We have two kinds of Kites in Bombay, the Common (Milvus gomnda) and the Brahminy (Haliastur indus), so called because it seems to be a bird of higher caste. It is smaller than the other and very much handsomer. Its head, neck and