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Updated: May 10, 2025
The white-backed vulture is a dark brown, almost black, bird, with a white back and a broad white band on the under surface of each wing, which is very noticeable when the bird is soaring high in the air on the watch for carrion. The two commonest vultures of the Nilgiris are the scavenger and the white-backed species. The raptores are not very strongly represented on the Nilgiris.
Reilly a planter of long experience near Coonoor on the Nilgiris that much loss of leaves, which has been attributed to leaf disease, is often due to other causes. Mr. It is worthy of note that the Coorg plant is not nearly so liable to attacks of leaf disease as the original Mysore Chick plant.
To the north of Mysore is the largest native state in India, Hyderabad, a picturesque plateau cut by the mighty Godavari River. Broad fertile plains, the lovely Nilgiris or "Blue Mountains," other regions with barren hills of limestone or granite.
My experience is that the common bulbul of the plains Molpastes hæmorrhous, or the Madras red-vented bulbul is very rarely seen at the Nilgiri hill stations. Jerdon, likewise, states that it ascends the Nilgiris only up to about 6000 feet. Davison, however, declares that the bird begins to get common 4 miles from Ootacamund and is very numerous about Coonoor and all down the ghats.
Davidson gives these mynas a very bad character, he declares that they do immense damage to the fruit gardens on the Nilgiris, so that without the aid of nets, it is next to impossible to preserve pears from their depredations. No other species of myna is common on the Nilgiris. As in the Himalayas so on the Nilgiris the family of flycatchers is well represented.
The majority of the kites appear to migrate from the Nilgiris during the south-west monsoon. The shikra is very like the brain-fever bird in appearance. It is a little smaller than the common house-crow. The upper plumage is ashy grey. The tail is of the same hue, but with broad dark brown cross-bars.
Its charming song, with which all who have visited Ootacamund are familiar, is almost indistinguishable from that of its European cousin. Its upper plumage is pale brown, spotted with black and buff; its throat and abdomen are white with black drops. This bird has a fine powerful song, but he who wishes to hear it has usually to resort to one of the forests on the plateau of the Nilgiris.
A friend of mine was once out small game shooting on the Nilgiris when a tiger seized one of his dogs. He at once put a ball cartridge into his smooth bore, had a beat, and wounded the tiger.
PART II The Common Birds of the Nilgiris The avifauna of the Nilgiris is considerably smaller than that of the Himalayas. This phenomenon is easily explained. The Nilgiris occupy a far less extensive area; they display less diversity of climate and scenery; the lofty peaks, covered with eternal snow, which form the most conspicuous feature of the Himalayan landscape, are wanting in the Nilgiris.
Of the common birds of the plains of Madras, the only ones that are really abundant on the Nilgiris are the black crow, the sparrow, the white-eye, the Madras bulbul, the myna, the purple sunbird, the tailor-bird, the ashy wren-warbler, the rufous-backed shrike, the white-browed fantail flycatcher, the Indian pipit, the Indian skylark, the common kingfisher, the pied crested cuckoo, the scavenger vulture, the Pondicherry vulture, the white-backed vulture, the shikra, the spotted dove, and the little brown dove.
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