Pet Birds of Bengal/Preface

The conquest of Nature, that has been advancing apace with the spread of material civilisation, has been putting difficulties in the way of man's free communion with Nature. The music that cheered him up spontaneously in his rural or urban environments at a time when he did not assert his independence of Nature, has now to be enjoyed through special efforts for securing and preserving it within reach. The truth of this will be realised to some extent by visits to a city like Calcutta or London where the rattling of carriage-wheels and the grunting of bus-horns make it difficult to even turn one's thought to a past enjoyment of avine music amidst natural scenery. Many of us feel this want caused by the progress of our material civilisation and try to make up for it by periodical excursions into villages, marshes, jungles ​and forests where Nature still has her citadel unassailed or unaffected. Such were the excursions made at times by President Roosevelt who used to refresh himself as also to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about the avine community by roaming about in the prairies and jungles of the United States or in the dense forests of far-off Africa; it was also the practice of the distinguished British ex-minister Viscount Grey who, not content with the stray song of a Robin at his window or a Finch in his garden, ran away from the cares of Whitehall into places where birds sang in chorus or poured forth floods of music in their unmolested natural abodes. Many lovers of bird-music may be of the habit which soothed the two statesmen in their gnawing cares, but there are others who want to have the remedy within easy reach. They will have the pleasure of the distant hills and dales as far as possible within the city itself, in their own garden, or in the ​public grounds hard by. The pleasure is derived of course through suggestion and imitation on a small scale, like the scenery reproduced on a stage to represent the actual scenery stretching for miles. This offers scope for the application of the highest human art and ingenuity, for there in the aviaries or on the open ground is to be made such a blending of of Nature and Art that the latter may hide its identity and be mistaken for the former. This blending of art and nature is meant to delude not only the human spectators visiting the place for pleasure, but also its feathered inmates who must feel there quite at home and take the amenities of the artificial dales and woodlands to be the same as those in their former rural or sylvan habitat. Flitting, roaming or hopping from place to place or branch to branch; mating, nesting, and rearing their young; chirruping, cooing, and carolling to their hearts' content; loving instead of resenting the restraint on their freedom ​if they mind it at all, they would enjoy their existence quite as much as the human visitors who take to these resorts in their spare half-hours to watch the habits and movements of their feathered companions for delight and study. It is here that the skill and experience of the aviculturist become a necessity; it is here that the utility of ornithology as a branch of human knowledge becomes patent. The reproduction of conditions pleasant to the birds, and suitable to their ways of living, is possible only to a specialist who has a deep and intimate knowledge of bird-life. It is the application of this knowledge that serves to keep alive the birds in the artificial conditions of the aviary and enable them to thrive there. It also supplies the means by which the bounds of human knowledge in regard to birds may be made wider and wider; for the aviaries are the laboratories of the ornithologist and it is through them that aviculture has become a handmaid of ornithology. The ​study of bird-life in Nature is beset with difficulties, and if we rely exclusively on the field observations of the ornithologist, we may have to wait long, and, in many instances, in vain. The field observer can not observe a particular bird the whole year through, and has, therefore, to glean facts in many cases from chance observations which may be misleading. The aviculturist, on the other hand, gets an opportunity of studying a bird for years in a scientific way and, if he does so, he can get at many truths regarding its nidification, courting, nesting etc., which are of the greatest interest and importance not only to a systematist for the purposes of classification, but also to a student of evolution. It is possible, therefore, through aviculture, to have not merely immediate pleasure and bits of knowledge of bird-life, the utility of which is admitted even by men with a practical turn of mind, but also to pursue their highest ideals of extending knowledge for the sake of know​ledge, the immediate utility of which, though not so easily understood, is, nevertheless, very great on account of the fact that it alone can create the conditions through which discoveries of the highest importance become a possibility.

The practice of keeping birds in captivity dates in India from remote antiquity. The Vedic literature contains many references to talking birds like Mynahs and Parrots which were regarded as common favourites at the time. Pigeons. were regarded as household birds of good omen. Accounts are available as to the caging of parrots at the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India. This great warrior took away from here a number of ring-necked parrots which are known to this day as Alexandrine Parrakeets. Ælian informs us that "in India there were many parrots which were held sacred by the Brahmans because they could imitate human speech, and which were therefore neither killed nor captured by the ​Indians." This statement is not wholly correct, because the talking propensity of the birds was discovered in captivity, and there was no sentiment among the people against the practice of caging them. The keeping of birds in aviaries, instead of in small cages, is noticed in the Mrichchhakatika, a sanskrit drama of about the 4th century A.D. The caging of talking birds for the adornment of houses and for pleasure was widely practised in ancient India, but evidences are meagre as to the caging of singing birds for the same purposes. Bigger birds like Saruses (Cranes), Peafowl, Raj-hans (Flamingoes) etc., were also kept at large in lawns and gardens in ancient India to heighten their beauty. Bird-fights were liked by the Hindu kings, while hawking was widely followed as a pastime. There is a Sanskrit work called Syainika Sastra by one of the Hindu princes, which gives a systematic study of the subject, recording and describing the habits and qualities of several species ​of falcons, and the means by which they were caught, tamed and trained. The ancient Hindus were keen observers of birds and bird-life. It is my impression that Sanskrit works on birds have mostly been overtaken by the same fate that has befallen works on other special subjects of secular importance. The physical features of many birds as also many of their habits that escape the eye of ordinary observers are delineated by the world-renowned Sanskrit poet Kalidasa in his works with a faithfulness which is really admirable. Shortness of space prevents me from dilating on the point, but detailed information on it can be had from a work of mine in Bengali called Pakhir Katha. Suffice it to say that the evidence at our disposal does not enable us to have a full idea about the activities of the ancient Hindu in regard to bird-keeping; but there can be no doubt that it was extensively practised, and birds were kept in cages and open gardens not ​only as a source of pleasure and as a luxury but also for diverse other purposes e.g., carriage of message, prevention of diseases by their presence (vide Kautiliya Arthasastra) etc.

The Muhammadan Emperors of India were very fond of cage-birds. Some of them were also fond of hawking and made elaborate arrangements for housing several kinds of hawks. The Emperor Akbar had several aviaries and bird-houses in which he kept a very large number of birds and pigeons. The first recorded attempt at cross-hybridisation in India is probably that of this monarch, who succeeded in raising the Fantail variety, appreciated so greatly by the Pigeon-fanciers of the present day. The sportive or fighting capacities of birds were greatly valued by the Muhammadans. The common Grey Partridges called Titar, Quails, Game Cocks and Bulbuls are noted for such capacities. A particular period of the year is still recognised as the time for holding such ​bird-contests for the satisfaction of the people with a fancy for those spectacles.

Aviculture, as we understand it present, is a very recent phase of bird-keeping. The term was first coined and used by the founders of the Avicultural Society of London in the latter part of the 19th century. The object of the Society is to encourage birds to live and thrive in congenial conditions in captivity in order to study their habits and the biological or ornithological phenomena for adding to the stock of our knowledge of bird-life. Foreign birds are to be extensively imported and studied. Before the establishment of this Society, bird-keeping in Europe followed a standard which was not exactly the present scientific one, and was rightly designated 'fancy'. The training of birds to imitate artificially created trilling sounds resulted in the nicely quavering song of the German Roller Canaries. The fanciers were also bent on mule-breeding and development and fixa​tion of particular colour-marks in parts of the body. Aviculture, on the other hand, has for its province the scientific study of birds as mentioned already. Most ornithologists in the past were ignorant of the avicultural branch of their science,—a state of things which the Avicultural Society has helped a good deal to remove. How far it has been successful in the realisation of its objects may be gathered from the fact that in 1900, it could assert its claim so far as to have a special section for aviculture in the International Congress of Ornithology at Paris. The avicultural study of Indian birds was first systematically taken up by those English scientists who established a school of aviculturists in England. The most prominent names among them are those of Butler, Reginald Phillips, Astley, Teschemaker, Meade-Waldo, Seth-Smith, and Humphrys.

No comprehensive literature on Indian cage-birds from the pen of modern ornithologists is available. Sporadic attempts ​at scientific caging and breeding of Indian birds are on record. Modern vernacular literature is utterly barren of books on ornithology generally, not to speak of a special branch of it regarding the cage-birds.

The ideal and the methods of enquiry of the European Aviculturists are almost unknown to the Indians who, however, appreciate the possibilities of many Indian birds for growing into valuable cage pets by virtue of their song, beauty and other attractive features. Europeans have not yet had ample opportunities for examining them thoroughly but the conclusion that would be reached by such an investigation in regard to the song-birds, would not, I think, be different from the opinion of Douglas Dewar that "song-birds are numerous in India...India possesses song-birds which can hold their own in any company. If the shama, the magpie-robin, the fan-tailed fly-catcher, the white-eye, the purple sunbird, the orange-headed ​ground thrush, and the bhimraj visited England in the summer, they would soon supplant in popular favour some of our British song-birds."

As a large number of Indian songsters is found in Bengal, the present volume is devoted to these song-birds, the subsequent volumes being reserved for the talking, fighting, and miscellaneous birds kept for show etc. I have not, however, confined myself wholly to the cage-habits of these birds, and this volume should not be regarded as a book exclusively on aviculture. Several Indian cage-birds are liked and caged by aviculturists in Europe, who thus become acquainted with their cage-life, but lack information about them in their wild state. I have attempted to deal in detail with this feature from direct field observation; at the same time, I have put in facts regarding cage-life supplementing my own experience by the results of observations made by European aviculturists in their bird-rooms. All the ​birds touched in the volume are or were, sometime or other, inmates of my aviaries; and I have said about them nothing which did not come within my personal observation, or was not verified as correct.

In including the birds in this volume, I have in view the limits of Bengal as they stand at present. When the first edition of Fauna (Birds) of British India appeared, Bengal was a much bigger province than it is now. It then included Bihar, Orissa and Chota Nagpur within its boundaries but those three divisions were sliced off into a separate province in 1912. A map of Bengal has been included in the volume, showing the present and past limits to enable the reader to understand the distribution of the birds treated of in the book. There is, however, a host of cage-favourites belonging to provinces other than Bengal. They do not as a rule come within my purview except in one or two cases in which the bird is not unfrequently seen in the fringe-areas of Bengal. The omission ​of the king of songsters, the Nightingale, in a volume on song-birds may need some explanation, specially when it is so often seen in Bengal as a caged pet. It is never found in a wild state here. In fact, there was, and perhaps still is, some doubt as to its being an Indian bird; but I find that Mr. Stuart Baker has included it in his Hand-list of Indian birds. Another caged pet, not treated of in this book, is the Calandra Lark (Melanocorypha maxima), known to Indians as the "Jal". It is largely imported from China and is never found in the plains of India. Though an allied species of this Lark—Melanocorypha bimaculata—is a winter visitor to the north-western parts of India, it is seldom caught for the cage, people preferring the Chinese bird. Among other birds not noticed here are a few songsters like the Fantail Fly-catcher (Rhipidura albifrontata) and the Purple Sun-bird (Arachnechthra asiatica) which, though found plentifully in Bengal, are unknown as pet ​birds. They are very delicate and are not likely to thrive on the regulation diet provided by Indian bird-keepers.

I have used freely in this volume the vernacular names of the birds with the object of familiarising the European readers with the local nomenclature. As regards the scientific names, I have followed Oates' authoritative volume—the Fauna of British India. The trinomial nomenclature which has been adopted in the second edition of the Avi-fauna (now in course of publication by Mr. Stuart Baker) has necessitated some very important changes in classification. As the published portion of the book reached me after I had sent my manuscripts to the press, I have no other alternative but to add an appendix containing the names. I have also appended some additional aviary notes on notes on several birds the habits of which were observed during the period the text was in the press.

Dr. Graham Renshaw, m.d., f.r.s.e., ​editor of the Natureland, has laid me under a deep obligation by contributing a foreword to this volume. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Professor Bipin Behari Gupta, m.a., for his valuable suggestions, and to my cousin Dr. Narendra Nath Law, m.a., b.l., p.r.s., p.h.d., whose words have always served as a stimulus to my energy, and whose efforts have always been directed to the prefection of the results of my labours. Dr. Law has put me under a fresh obligation by including this volume in his Calcutta Oriental Series. My thanks are due to Mr. Sudhindra Lal Roy, m.a., for material assistance and to Mr. N. Kushari for the artistic drawing of the illustrations. I must also acknowledge the help I have received from Messrs. Nalin Chandra Paul and Raghu Nath Sil while putting the manuscripts through the press.