Dewar’s Calendar – January

This entry was posted Saturday, 5 January, 2013 at 11:16 am

Continuing with the series of extracts from Douglas Dewar’s A Bird Calendar for Northern India, published in 1916, here is his lyrical description for January.

Take nine-and-twenty sunny, bracing English May days, steal from March as many still, starry nights, to these add two rainy mornings and evenings, and the product will resemble a typical Indian January. This is the coolest month in the year, a month when the climate is invigorating and the sunshine temperate…

January is the month in which the avian population attains its maximum. Geese, ducks, teal, pelicans, cormorants, snake-birds and ospreys abound in the rivers and jhils; the marshes and swamps are the resort of millions of snipe and other waders; the fields and groves swarm with flycatchers, chats, starlings, warblers, finches, birds of prey and the other migrants which in winter visit the plains from the Himalayas and the country beyond…

From every mango tope emanates a loud “Think of me … Never to be.” This is the call of the grey-headed flycatcher* (Culicicapa ceylonensis), a bird that visits the plains of northern India every winter. In summer it retires to the Himalayas for nesting purposes…

The nuthatches begin to tune up in January. They sing with more cheer than harmony, their love-song being a sharp penetrating tee-tee-tee-tee-tee.

* Current name: Grey-headed Canary Flycatcher.

Taken, with grateful thanks, from Project Gutenberg.

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