Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/35

Rh the unlucky young lark or incautious quail. If it alights, it alights on the ground, but the sole of this bird's foot does not seem to require much rest. Long-winged and light-bodied, it skims along the grass and skirts the bush, dips to the hollow and rises to the mound, as if it knew some charm to cancel the laws of gravitation. The sexes of the common Harrier are so unlike that no one who did not know would suspect their relationship. The male is like a Gull even in colour, pale blue-grey on all the upper parts and white underneath. The female is a dark, umber-brown bird, mottled with reddish, the under parts being spotted or dashed with reddish on a white or pale ground. The lady is larger than her lord, as is the fashion among hawks. I am referring to the Common or Pale Harrier (Circus macrurus). Montague's Harrier (Circus cineraceus) is very like it in both sexes on a passing view, and either species may be seen occasionally in Bombay, for they are very common all over India in the cold season. They arrive about October and depart in March or April to colder regions, where they will lay their eggs and bring up their young on the ground, strange hawks that they are.

These birds have a relation called the Marsh Harrier (Circus æruginosus), which leaves the dry land to them and devotes its energies to swamps, tanks and all shallow waters; a bird well cursed of sportsmen, for though its chief business is with frogs, it never refuses a wounded snipe or duck. What is almost more irritating is that, as it advances, slow-flapping, over rice-field or rushy marsh, every snipe takes wing. In the air they have no reason to