Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/33

Rh breast are pure white, while all the rest of the plumage is of a rich chestnut colour. Young birds are of a more earthy hue and have not white heads, but even in that stage they can be distinguished at a glance from Common Kites by their tails, which are not forked, but rounded. For the avoidance of family brawls nature seems to have assigned separate portions to these two birds, giving the refuse of the land to the one and the refuse of the water to the other. It is not that one eats flesh and the other fish. Nothing that goes overboard from a ship comes amiss to the Brahminy, and the Common Kite will snatch fish from the very basket on a woman's head. But the one likes to pick its food off the water and the other off the ground. So the one haunts the harbour, while the other takes charge of the bazaar. I do not say that they never invade each other's preserves. Both build on trees about the beginning of the year, and generally lay two eggs, which are white, spotted with reddish-brown. The Common Kites go to Poona, with Government, for the monsoon months. In Bombay there are always some that do not manage to get away, but down the coast I have looked in vain for a Common Kite from the beginning of June till the end of August. When they return there is for some weeks much squealing and quarrelling until the boundaries of each one's beat are fixed and the usurpations of crows and Brahminies repelled. The Brahminies do not go away. They like water even in the form of rain.

The Buzzards and Harriers follow close upon the Kites. This is not exactly Jerdon's order, but one of