Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/93

Rh Flycatchers concern themselves only with things that fly, and they catch these on the wing. The King Crow and the Bee-eater, as we have seen, do business in that line too, but they take their stations on high places and pursue their quarry into the sky. The Flycatcher haunts sylvan shades and darts about among the branches, snapping up its tiny prey.

Indian Flycatchers may be divided into two sorts, the plain and the fancy. Of the fancy we have two species in Bombay. The first is the Paradise Flycatcher (Tchitrea paradisi), which wears two streamers of white satin ribbon in its tail and looks like a meteor as it flits from tree to tree. Its body and wings are white too, exquisitely white, but its head and throat and distinguished crest are glossy black, with green reflections. It is a bird that would catch the eye of a blind man, and everybody who has roamed about Matheran or Mahableshwar must be familiar with it, but I daresay some will be surprised to hear that it is a Bombay bird. The fact is that the white plumage is the livery of the male only, and even he does not attain it until he is well advanced in years. Before that the upper parts of his body and his wings and tail, including streamers, are of a rich chestnut hue. At an earlier stage he wants the streamers, and the female never has them. A young bird, in fact, or a female, though handsome enough in its chestnut suit and black hat, looks like a sort of Bulbul and attracts little notice. And, as we know, ladies and children generally form the majority of a community. Besides this, I believe that the Paradise Flycatcher only visits us for a short time during the cold season. I have never heard of its nest being found on this