  The number of kites to be seen in any given place depends almost entirely upon the state of sanitation in that place. In England conservancy arrangements are so good that the kite is practically extinct. We have no use for the bird at home. “Il faut vive,” says the kite, “and if you do not provide me with offal I shall prey upon poultry,” “As to your living,” replies the farmer, “Je n’en vois pas la necessitÉ, and, if you attack my poultry, I shall attack you.” The kites in the United Kingdom were as good as their word; so were the farmers. The result is that the kite is a rara avis at home; a nestling born in the British Isles is said to be worth £25. India teems with kites (Milvus govinda); we may therefore infer that sanitation out there is primitive. Unfortunately, we Anglo-Indians do not require the kites to enable us to appreciate this fact. Kites, however, are useful in giving us the measure of the insanitariness of a town. Lahore is a great place for kites. That city contains a greater proportionate number of these scavenger birds for its size than any Kites are the assistant sweepers to Government; I was going to say “honorary sweepers,” but that would not have been strictly accurate, for in India nothing is done for nothing. The kites receive no money wages, nothing that comes under the Accountant-General’s audit, but they are paid in truck. They are allowed to keep the refuse they clear away. This seems on the face of it to be a bandobast most favourable to the Government, a very cheap way of securing servants; but, like many another arrangement which reads well on paper, it is in practice not so advantageous as it appears. Thus the kite is apt to put a wide, I might almost say an elastic interpretation on the word “refuse.” To take a concrete example: the other day one of these birds swooped down and carried off the chop that was to have formed the piÈce de rÉsistance of my breakfast. But, notwithstanding his many misdeeds, the kite is a bird with which we in India could ill afford to dispense, for he subsists chiefly upon garbage. Fortified with this knowledge, we are able to properly appreciate the sublime lines of the poet Hurdis: “Mark but the soaring kite, and she will reade Brave rules for diet; teach thee how to feede; She flies aloft; she spreads her ayrie plumes Above the earth, above the nauseous fumes Of dang’rous earth; she makes herself a stranger T’ inferior things, and checks at every danger.” Now, I like these lines. Not that I altogether approve of the sentiments therein expressed. I would not advise anyone, not even a German, to learn table manners from the kite. What I do like about the above is the splendid manner in which the poet strikes out a new line. [N.B.—The poets and their friends are strongly advised to omit the forty lines that follow.] The vulgar herd of poets can best be compared to a flock of sheep. One of them makes some wild statement about a bird, and all the rest plagiarise it. Not so Hurdis; he is no slavish imitator. He obviously knows nothing about the kite, but that is a trifle. If poets wrote only of things with which they were au fait, where would all our poetry be? What Hurdis did know was that, as a general rule, when you want to write about a bird of which you know nothing, you are pretty safe in reading what the poets say about it, and then saying the very opposite. That in this particular case the rule does not hold good is Hurdis’s misfortune, not his fault. The kite happens to be almost the only bird about which the poets write correctly. This is a phenomenon I am totally unable to explain. Cowper sang: “Kites that swim sublime In still repeated circles, screaming loud.” Writes Clare: “Of chick and duck and gosling gone astray, All falling preys to the sweeping kite.” King says: “The kite will to her carrion fly.” The most captious critic could not take exception to any of these sentiments. He might certainly pull a long face at Macaulay’s “The kites know well the long stern swell That bids the Roman close.” But he would find it exceedingly difficult to prove that the kites do not know this. But let us leave the poets and return to the bird as it is, for common though he be in the East, the “sailing glead” is a bird that will repay a little study. His powers of flight, his ability to soar high above the earth, to sail through the thin air with outstretched and apparently motionless wings, are equalled by few birds. Watch him as he glides overhead in great circles until he disappears from sight. He constantly utters his tremulous, querulous scream—Chee-hee-hee-hee-hee; his head is bent so that his beak points downwards, and few things are there which escape his keen eye. Suddenly he espies a rabble of crows squabbling over a piece of meat. Quick as thought he is full on his downward career. A second or two later the fighting, squawking crows hear the swish of his wings—a sound very familiar to them—and promptly make way for him. None desires to feel the grip of his powerful talons. He sweeps above the bone of contention, drops Crows love not the kite. His manner of living resembles theirs so closely that a certain amount of opposition is inevitable. Then, again, the kite never makes any bones about carrying off a young crow if the opportunity presents itself. If the truth be told, the crows are afraid of the kite. They will, of course, not admit this. You will never get a crow to admit anything that may be used as evidence against him. The crows regard kites with much the same feelings that the smaller boys at school regard the big, bullying boys. Those who know the ways of the corvi (and who is there in India that does not?) will not be surprised to hear that they never lose an opportunity of scoring off a kite. There is no commoner sight than that of a brace of them, as likely as not aided and abetted by a king crow, chasing the fleeing glead, and endeavouring to pull a beakful of feathers out of his rump. But crows prefer to worry the kite upon terra firma, for the latter is a clumsy bird when on the ground. He is so heavy that he can only waddle along, and, notwithstanding his great pinions, he experiences difficulty in raising himself off a level plain. Hence it is when a kite is resting, half asleep, upon the ground, that the “lurking villain crows” usually worry him. It requires at least two of the “treble-dated birds” to do this with success. One alights in front of the victim and the other behind him. This apparently harmless manoeuvre is quite sufficient to Kites are very fond of settling on the tops of posts, and on other spiky places; this feature they share with crows, green parrots, blue jays, and other birds. I cannot bring myself to believe that such perches are comfortable; but, just as a small boy will prefer balancing himself upon a narrow railing to sitting on a proper seat, so do birds seem to enjoy perching on all sorts of impossible places. Birds are like small boys in many respects. A kite, of course, enjoys one great advantage when he elects to rest upon such a perch: it is then impossible for “ribald” crows to come and squat to right and to left of him. Kites are not migratory birds in most parts of India. It is said, however, that the kites leave Calcutta during the rains. I have never visited the “Queen of Indian cities,” so I cannot say whether or not the kites act thus. Jerdon, Blanford, and Cunningham all declare that they do; but Finn writes: “How such an idea could have arisen I do not know. I have always noticed kites in the rains, and have never heard that they were ever in the habit of leaving Calcutta then.” The truth The nesting season for the kites is at any time when they feel disposed to undertake the cares of the family. The books tell us that it begins in January. This is correct. Where they go wrong is in asserting that it ends in April. I should rather say that it ends in December. It is true, however, that in Northern India the greater number of nests are constructed in the first three months of the calendar year. The completed nest is about the size of a football, and is an untidy mass of twigs, rags, mud, brickbats, and such-like things. It is usually placed high up in a tall tree, not quite at the top, on a forked branch. It is not a great architectural triumph, but it serves its purpose. Two eggs are usually laid. These have a white ground blotched with red or brown. Kites object to having their nest pried into, so that he who attempts to steal the eggs must not be surprised if the owners attack him. |
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