Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/66

50 cage hand over hand, or rather, foot over foot: hence the name, Climbers. Except this peculiarity in the form of the foot, Parrots have little in common with Woodpeckers or Cuckoos, and in all modern systems they are widely separated, being, as I have already said, ranked in an order by themselves and placed near the Owls. They have proportionally a larger brain than almost any other birds, and the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, is endowed with a very discriminating sense of taste. They have also, as a rule, a fine ear. The short, curved, bill is partly covered with a cēre of bare skin, a feature in which they resemble the birds of prey.

India possesses a good many representatives of the family, but, with a single exception, they all belong to one division of it, namely, the Parrakeets, which are green birds of moderate size, with long tails. Cockatoos, Macaws, true Parrots, Lories, are all absent from India. And of the Parrakeets, only one, the Rose-ringed, or Common, Parrakeet, makes its home in Bombay. I was once told by a gentleman, whose memory must have gone back to the early fifties, that even this was a recent settler. He said that when he came to Bombay there were no Parrots. Statements of this kind, except from very careful observers, must be received with caution, but it is not impossible that the wild Parrots, which now swarm about Malabar Hill, are for the most part descendants of escaped prisoners. For Bombay has long been a veritable Botany Bay to this persecuted race. Hundreds upon hundreds every season are drafted from the mainland to the great slave mart in the Crawford Market, crowded together