Pet Birds of Bengal/Kāli Shāmā (Indian Robin)

As graceful and well-built as the Dhayal, though smaller than it in size but larger than the Piddah by about an inch, this bird lends a charm to the Indian countryside by its agile movements and smart tail-play. It is called the Indian Robin by the English residents of ​this country. The Indian name of the bird—Kāli Shama—is apparently a product of association of ideas. Any one who sees it will at once be reminded of the Shama,—so close do the two birds come as regards their movements and tail-play. It is the absence of the chestnut colour from the breast of the Indian Robin (where it is replaced by black) which distinguishes it from the Shama and bestows on it the distinctive vernacular name. The chestnut, however, is shifted down to its seat of trousers, where it becomes visible whenever its tail is thrown far up over its back. The darker tone of the general body-colour of the Indian Robin suggests a likeness to the Piddah (Pratincola caprata) with which it is found often in similar surroundings. The chief point of its resemblance to the Piddah is in its habit of nesting in holes and capturing its quarry on the ground, but in this latter habit, we notice some difference. Instead of quietly waiting like the Piddah for the approach of insects, the Robin hops and ​runs about on the ground for catching them. The chief difference is that while the Piddah is shy and avoids the vicinity of man, the Indian Robin is quite the reverse.

This bird belongs to the genus Thamnobia which contains two Indian species with distinct ranges of distribution—the species cambaiensis (the brown-backed Indian Robin) belongs to Northern India while the species fulicataDistribution (the black-backed Indian Robin) is confined to southern India. The latitude of Bombay seems to be the geographical borderland of these two species. In the tract of the country from Ahmadnagar to the mouth of the Godavari, both the birds are found, and, during the moulting season, it becomes difficult to discriminate between the two species. Both the species are resident. The Northern species is locally known as the Kāli Shama. It is not common in Bengal except in the region west of the Hooghly. It is not a bird of the plains and lives in rocky, rugged districts where the climate is ​extreme. "Their idea of an earthly paradise," says Dewar, "is a flat, rocky, barren, arid piece of land".

Just as the Dhayal by its bold and springy movements and vigorous tail-play enlivens the countryside in Bengal, the Indian Robin imparts a homely charm to the rugged districts of Behar and the United Provinces. In Summer,Field Notes when the blazing sun has burnt up all the grass, leaving the whole country an uneven stretch of burning, brown land—the presence of the Thamnobia helps to dispel the frowning looks of Nature. It may be seen sitting on a big boulder with its tail upraised in order to show off its bright colouring to advantage. The tail is sometimes flung up so far as to come over the head, making an acute angle with the back. Sometimes the bird may be seen issuing from a small prickly shrub. Then looking round, it observes an insect, after which it runs with great agility without the least clumsiness in its movements.

​ It pursues and catches several insects at a run and returning with them in its beak to a boulder, a shrub, or a neighbouring tree, as the case may be, eats them leisurely. Small shrubs, plants like those of prickly pear and wild berries or the leafless Palas (Butea frondosa) groves are its favourite haunts. In Behar and the United Provinces, it is truly a household bird, and like ​the English Robin, perches on walls, window-sills, housetops, and verandahs, and sometimes, even enters houses. It is a very familiar bird there, and is always to be found in gardens, and old temples and buildings, seldom straying far from human habitation. The sight of man does not ruffle it in the least. In this respect it is a more self-possessed bird than the Dhayal. The latter bird has its own ideas about the safe distance from which it will allow you to observe its graceful movements. But the Indian Robin is not so sensitive. If you stand three or four cubits away, your presence will not frighten it at all. It will, on the other hand, proudly show off its beauty of form and movement, and even display before you its red trouser-patch by continually sending up its tail over the back. It has a very pleasant warble. "Although not the peer of its English cousin, it is not a mean singer." In summer its song is vigorous. In winter its performance has little charm. It is not gregarious and lives with its mate, ​though just after the breeding season it is sometimes seen in small parties, for the fledgelings stay a pretty long time with the parents.

The Indian Robin mates from March to August, and builds its nest in all sorts of queer places. Spaces in stacks of bricks, holes in the ground or buildings and window-sills are given great preference. Disused bird's nest, railway cuttings,Nests and Eggs roots of trees, old watering pots in a shrub, or even pieces of cloth hanging in a tree—serve well for its nest-building. The nest is a mere pad of grass roots, vegetable fibres, and a host of heterogeneous materials, lined with feathers, human or horse-hair, and often fragments of snake-skin. Khus-khus and onion peels have been found in the nests. The eggs are four in number. Their ground-colour is white faintly tinged with either green, pink, pale brown or cream-colour, green being the most common. The markings are speckles of different shades of reddish brown, but ​they vary greatly in their character, extent and intensity.

Spruce and neat in attire, jaunty and gallant in movements, the Kāli Shama will afford pleasure to its keeper if properly housed. A nimble runner and an inhabitant not of the close confines of woods but of open countries where theCage-life landscape reaches up to the horizon—this bird would feel better in the comparative spaciousness of an outdoor aviary than in the cramping closeness of a cage. If it can get the opportunity of daily baths—both a water-bath and a sun-bath—it will bear its life of captivity with admirable grace. It is a bird of a sunny country—rather too much sunny according to its human inhabitants—and it vastly enjoys the burning rays of the sun. To keep it in health, it should be allowed to enjoy the sunshine for a considerable part of the day. Give it full meals of insects, because that is its proper food. But it will keep as well on satoo and ghee with ​a few grass-hoppers and maggots. I have seen it partake of bread and milk with evident relish. Like the Shama and the Dhayal, it is devoid of communal fellow-feeling, but it is not as peevish and fretful as they are.

To be seen at its best, the Indian Robin requires elevated places inside the aviary. Though not incapable of perching on twigs and trees, it frequents, in nature, rugged and elevated earth and rocky places which are also its resting sites during sun-bath. In the aviary the rockeries can amply serve this purpose. It will skip in and out of the holes as it does in its natural surroundings. And as it silently runs about, its tail rises up with mechanical precision. In the case of this bird, the tail-movement appears to have little or no connection with its emotions as in the Piddah, or with its voice, as in the Shama and the Blue-Jay.

Confiding and courageous, it disdains to fight shy of human intrusion. While enjoying the sun, of which it is inordinately fond, ​it forgets all fear of man and allows him to come very near. If its keeper, If its keeper, watching in front of the aviary window, stands in the path of the sun's rays, it steps up within a few inches of his feet to get the sun and warble its sweet, merry note.

Though not dressed in gay plumage, the Indian Robin arrests our attention. One peculiarity about its coloration is that the deeper hue is on theColoration lower parts of its body. Ordinarily we find that, in birds which are not uniformly coloured, the colour of the upper body is deeper than that of the lower. Here, however, the colour-setting is reversed. The exception in this case cannot be without reason. The colour of its upper body is brown. Does not this colour, together with the fact that it lives in rocky districts where the landscape is also of the same colour for the greater part of the year, suggest protective coloration? And as the bird is mostly terrestrial in habits, the deeper tint of its lower body becomes less prominent.

​In the Northern species, sides of the head, neck, chin, throat, breast, the upper part of the abdomen, and sides of the body are deep glossy black. This black portion appears bluish in sunlight. The whole of the upper plumage is sandy brown except a white band, as in the Dhayal and the Piddah, on the wings. The white of the Piddah in the lower part of the body is replaced by chestnut in the Thamnobia. The Southern bird is wholly glossy black in the upper part and has the same white wing-patch and the same chestnut vent. The males of the two species are not difficult to distinguish but the females are very close to each other. The female is a sandy-brown bird with the vental portions chestnut like the male. The young look like their mother except for reddish edges to the wings. The chestnut in the underparts is pale.