Posts tagged with “spring”

Dewar’s Calendar — April

Tuesday, 2 April, 2013

Douglas Dewar presents a rich account of the bird life in April in his classic A Bird Calendar for Northern India, published in 1916. Here are a few extracts:

In the eastern and southern districts hot-weather conditions are established long before mid-April, while in the sub-Himalayan belt the temperature remains sufficiently low throughout the month to permit human beings to derive some physical enjoyment from existence. In that favoured tract the nights are usually clear and cool, so that it is very pleasant to sleep outside beneath the starry canopy of the heavens. As soon as the Holi festival is over the cultivators issue forth in thousands, armed with sickles, and begin to reap. They are almost as active as the birds, but their activity is forced and not spontaneous…Many trees are in flower. Throughout April the air is heavy with the scent of blossoms.The great avian emigration, which began in March, now reaches its height. During the warm April nights millions of birds leave the plains of India. The few geese remaining at the close of March, depart in the first days of April.The brahminy ducks*, which during the winter months were scattered in twos and threes over the lakes and rivers of Northern India, collect into flocks that migrate, one by one, to cooler climes, so that, by the end of the first week in May, the a-onk of these birds is no longer heard. The mallard, gadwall, widgeon, pintail, the various species of pochard and the common teal are rapidly disappearing. With April duck-shooting ends. Of the migratory species only a few shovellers and garganey teal tarry till May.

The snipe and the quail are likewise flighting towards their breeding grounds. Thus on the 1st of May the avian population of India is less by many millions than it was at the beginning of April. But the birds that remain behind more than compensate us, by their great activity, for the loss of those that have departed. There is more to interest the ornithologist in April than there was in January.

The bird chorus is now at its best.

In the hills the woods resound with the cheerful double note of the European cuckoo# (Cuculus canorus). This bird is occasionally heard in the plains of the Punjab in April, and again from July to September, when it no longer calls in the Himalayas. This fact, coupled with the records of the presence of the European cuckoo in Central India in June and July, lends support to the theory that the birds which enliven the Himalayas in spring go south in July and winter in the Central Provinces.

Ornithologists stationed in Central India will render a service to science if they keep a sharp look-out for European cuckoos and record the results of their observations. In this way alone can the above theory be proved or disproved.

April is a month in which the pulse of bird life beats very vigorously in India.

* Also called: Ruddy Shelduck.

# Also called: Eurasian Cuckoo.

Taken, with grateful thanks, from Project Gutenberg.

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Dewar’s Calendar — March

Friday, 8 March, 2013

Here we present the next extract from Douglas Dewar’s A Bird Calendar for Northern India, published in 1916, where the author gives a wonderful account for the month of March, with particular reference to bird migration.

In March the climate of the plains…varies from place to place. In the western sub-Himalayan tracts, as in the Punjab, the weather still leaves little to be desired. The sun indeed is powerful…but the nights and early mornings are delightfully cool.The garden, the jungle and the forest are beautified by the gorgeous reds of the flowers of the silk-cotton tree, the Indian coral tree and the flame-of-the-forest.March is a month of great activity for the birds…The great exodus of the winter visitors from the plains of India begins…

This exodus is usually preceded by the gathering into flocks of the rose-coloured starlings*… Large noisy congregations of these birds are a striking feature of February in Bombay, of March in the United Provinces, and of April in the Punjab.

Rose-coloured starlings spend most of their lives in the plains of India, going to Asia Minor for a few months each summer for nesting purposes. In the autumn they spread themselves over the greater part of Hindustan, most abundantly in the Deccan.

In the third or fourth week of February the rosy starlings of Bombay begin to form flocks. These make merry among the flowers of the coral tree, which appear first in South India, and last in the Punjab. The noisy flocks journey northwards in a leisurely manner, timing their arrival at each place simultaneously with the flowering of the coral trees. They feed on the nectar provided by these flowers and those of the silk-cotton tree. Thus the rosy starlings reach Allahabad about the second week in March, and Lahore some fifteen days later.

Among the earliest of the birds to forsake the plains of Hindustan are the grey-lag goose and the pintail duck… The destination of the majority of these migrants is Tibet or Siberia, but a few are satisfied with the cool slopes of the Himalayas as a summer resort in which to busy themselves with the sweet cares of nesting… Examples of these more local migrants are the grey-headed and the verditer flycatchers, the Indian bush-chat and, to some extent, the paradise flycatcher and the Indian oriole.

The Indian oriole is not the only species which finds the climate of the United Provinces too severe for it in winter; the koel and the paradise flycatcher likewise desert us in the coldest months…The return of these and the other migrant species to the Punjab in March is as marked a phenomenon as is the arrival of the swallow and the cuckoo in England in spring.

* Current name: Rosy Starling.

Taken, with grateful thanks, from Project Gutenberg.

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