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Updated: May 10, 2025
Be this as it may, the Madras red-vented bulbul is not the common bulbul of the Nilgiris. Its sweet notes are very largely, if not entirely, replaced by the yet sweeter and more cheery calls of the hill-bulbul. It will be labour lost to look up this name in Oates's ornithology, because it does not occur in that work.
A planter on the slopes of the Nilgiris gave me a well marked instance of leaf disease being increased from want of digging, when there was a good opportunity of contrasting the dug with the undug soil.
In the Himalayas they cannot do this, because the valleys are usually deep. The kites, therefore, sail there at a lower level than the hill-tops, and their plaintive chee-hee-hee-hee-hee is heard throughout the day. It is not a very cheerful sound, so that in this respect the Nilgiris have an advantage over the Himalayas.
The inhabitants of the Nilgiris call this last Puttani kurivi, which, I understand, means the pea-bird. This heterogeneous family is well represented in the Nilgiris. But, of course there are seven sisters in the hills. Every part of India has its flocks of babblers. The Nilgiri babbler is a shy bird; it seems to dislike being watched.
Several species of drongo or king-crow occur on the Nilgiris, but not one of them is sufficiently abundant to be numbered among the common birds of the hill stations. Of the warblers it may be said "their name is legion." So many species exist, and the various species are so difficult to differentiate, that the family drives most field ornithologists to the verge of despair.
I know of no certain method of distinguishing these two species without catching them and examining the hind toe. This is much shorter in the former than in the latter species. The Nilgiri pipit goes about singly or in pairs, and, although it frequents grassy land, it usually keeps to cover and flies into a tree or bush when alarmed. It is confined to the highest parts of the Nilgiris.
King found in one place, on the plateau of the Nilgiris, at an elevation of 7000 feet, "a good many castings," which are interesting for their great size. The worms which eject them are seen only during the wet season, and are reported to be from 12 to 15 inches in length, and as thick as a man's little finger. These castings were collected by Dr.
As a rule, sparrows nest about houses, but numbers of them breed in the steep cuttings on the road between Coonoor and Ootacamund. This, however, is only a winter visitor: it departs from the Nilgiris in April and does not return until the summer season is over. This family includes the swallows and the martins.
This article does not deal exhaustively with the birds of the Nilgiris; it is merely a short account of the birds commonly seen in the higher regions of those hills during the summer months. To compile an exhaustive list would be easy. I refrain from doing so because a reader unacquainted with Indian ornithology would, if confronted by such a list, find it difficult to identify the common birds.
The distribution of the avifauna of mountainous countries is largely a matter of elevation. At the base of the Nilgiris all the plains birds of the neighbourhood occur, and most of them extend some way up the hillsides. The majority, however, do not ascend as high as 1000 feet.
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