Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This is so like the species just described, that nine out of ten people fail to differentiate between the two birds. Close inspection shows that this species has a little tuft of feathers on the forehead, which the common myna lacks. On the other hand, the yellow patch of skin round the eyes is wanting in the jungle myna.
Now, by daylight, it was easy to have a good look at him. . . . His white forehead was big, and on it was a hump such as is only seen on very stupid dogs; he had little, blue, dingy-looking eyes, and the expression of his whole face was extremely stupid. When he reached the cubs he stretched out his broad paws, laid his head upon them, and began: "Mnya, myna . . . nga nga nga . . . !"
Some of our familiar friends of the plains are still with us. There are the kite, the scavenger vulture, the common myna, and a number of others, but these are the exceptions which prove the rule. Scientific ornithologists recognise this great difference between the two faunas, and include the Himalayas in the Palæarctic region, while the plains form part of the Oriental region.
When the birds are feeding in company, they keep up a continual chatter, which is not unpleasing to the ear. When alarmed they give vent to a harsh cry of a kind characteristic of the babbler tribe. The scimitar-babbler is a bird nearly as big as a myna. It is of brownish hue and has a tail of moderate length.
The sound which it seems to produce more often than any other is very like the harsh anger-cry of the common myna. Many Himalayan birds have rather discordant notes, and in this respect these mountains do not compare favourably with the Nilgiris, where the blithe notes of the bulbuls are very pleasing to the ear. Jays are by nature bold birds.
I should not have deemed it necessary to describe this bird, had not a lady asked me a few days ago whether a pair of mynas, which were fighting as only mynas can fight, were seven sisters. The myna is a bird considerably smaller than a crow.
Æthiopsar fuscus has all the habits of the common myna. Like the latter, it struts about sedately in company with cattle in order to snatch up the grasshoppers disturbed by the moving quadrupeds. It feeds largely on the insects that infest the capsules of Lobelia excelsa, and is often to be seen clinging, like a tit, to the stem in order to secure the insects.
Sometimes, kestrel-like, it hovers in the air on rapidly-vibrating pinions until it espies a fish in the water below, when it closes its wings and drops with a splash in the water, to emerge with a silvery object in its bill. This is a bird about the size of a myna. The wings and tail are boldly marked with alternate bands of black and white. The remainder of the plumage is of a fawn colour.
They therefore merit only passing notice. The common myna of the Nilgiris is not Acridotheres tristis but Æthiopsar fuscus the jungle myna. The casual observer usually fails to notice any difference between the two species, so closely do they resemble one another. Careful inspection, however, shows that the jungle myna has a little patch of feathers in front of the head over the beak.
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.
Word Of The Day