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Updated: June 16, 2025
Amadavats occur all over the Nilgiris. Finches are seed-eating birds characterised by a stout bill, which is used for husking grain. Most of us see too much of him. He is to be observed in every garden on the Nilgiris, looking as though the particular garden in which he happens to be belongs to him.
Flocks of rose finches raced chattering overhead to quarrel with the tiny willow warblers, the chi-u-teb-tok, holding fief of the drooping, graceful bowers bending down to the little laughing stream that for the past hour had chuckled and gurgled like a friendly water baby beside us.
They were each twelve or fifteen inches in length, and of a greenish colour nearly as green as the leaves of the tree itself. Were they its fruit? No. The weeping-willow bears no fruit of that size. They were not fruit. They were nests of birds! Yes; they were the nests of a colony of harmless finches of the genus Ploceus, better known to you under the appellation of "weaver-birds."
We found it afterwards all over Arnheim's Land, especially on the table land and on the rocky heads of the South Alligator River, where it grew on sandy flats surrounding the rocks, and particularly round sandy swamps. The Cypress-pine and Pandanus were frequent, but Sterculia was rare. We remarked that the little finches generally anticipated us in the harvest of the ripe fruit of the latter.
He did not pause until he reached the shore of the lotus pond; then, putting his fingers on his lips, he said: "There, now, I'll show you. Look here!" Rising cautiously upon tip-toe as he spoke, he pointed to the hollow in the trunk of a tree. A pair of finches had built their nest in it, and five young ones with big yellow beaks stretched their ugly little heads hungrily upward.
The flocks of Finches gradually decrease and we observe the males scattering in different directions in search of territories; we watch the summer migrants on their way small parties halting for a few hours in the hedgerows and then continuing their journey, single individuals alighting on trees and bushes and resting there for a few minutes, and the constant passage of flocks of various dimensions at various altitudes; and we see Fieldfares, Redwings, and Bramblings slowly making their way from the south and the west to their homes in the far north.
But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and snatch the food from the finches' very mouths.
From out of the mowing grass, finches rise and fly to the hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and, descending into the grass, are concealed as in a forest. A thrush travelling along the hedgerow just outside goes by the gateway within a yard. Bees come upon the light wind, gliding with it, but with their bodies aslant across the line of current.
Probably the trees would grow again were it not for sheep and horses, but these preserve the sward. The plough has nibbled at it and gnawed away great slices, but it extends mile after mile; these are mere touches on its breadth. It is as wild as wild can be without deer or savage beasts. The bees like it, and the finches come. It is silent and peaceful like the sky above.
Taking his cue from the finches, he separates plants into two grand divisions, those that shed their seeds in the fall, and those that hold them through the winter.
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