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Like several other little owls, it sometimes shows itself during the daytime. Once at Mussoorie I noticed a pigmy collared owlet sitting as bold as brass on a conspicuous branch about midday and making grimaces at me. From the owls to the diurnal birds of prey it is but a short step. Next to the warblers, the raptores are the most difficult birds to distinguish one from the other.
In the dentirostres, for instance, we have in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character of the raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, so deadly to all the lesser field birds. In the genus bos, we have, in the sub-typical group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing an innate detestation of man."
Who would suspect, under such a heading, an elaborate eulogy of Walt Whitman? The writer is obviously more at home among the song-birds than among the Raptores, unless he be the discoverer of some new species of eagle characterized by traits very unlike those of other members of the genus.
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.
Hawks, of course, are always in sight, and that in astonishing variety, from the osprey down to two or three varieties of the sparrow-hawk. A monograph on the Raptores of Eagle Lake would be a most comprehensive work. The osprey, notwithstanding the abundance of his scaly prey, is not common: probably the field is too limited for him. Ducks are the attraction of the other large species.
This species may be said to be the warbler of the Western Himalayas, and, as such, it has been made the subject of a separate essay. The butcher-birds are the best-known members of this fraternity. Undoubtedly passerine in structure, shrikes are as indubitably raptores by nature. They are nothing less than pocket hawks.
In the annulosa it is not distinct, although we must also remember that insects do produce enormous ravages and annoyance in many parts of the earth. It comes to a kind of climax in the ferae and raptores, which fulfil the function of butchers among land animals. As we descend through tribes, families, genera, species, it becomes fainter and fainter, but never altogether vanishes.
Having sufficiently examined these works, the visitor should at once begin his inspection of the Raptores or These include some splendid ornithological specimens. They are divided into two families: those who pursue their depredations by day; and those which wait till night cloaks their proceedings.
Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastantibus defuere terrae, et mare scrutantur: si locuples hostis est, avari; si pauper, ambitiosi: quos non Oriens, non Occidens, satiaverit. Soli omnium opes atque inopiam pari affectu concupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant."
The Euphema elegans then passed us, with several other kinds of birds, but some of them remained, as did also the Euphema Bourkii, which the reader will find more particularly noticed under its proper head. There were always an immense number of Raptores following the line of migration, and living on the smaller birds; nor was any thing more remarkable than the terror they caused amongst them.
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