Even more like living emeralds are the little green bee-eaters (_Merops viridis_), whose feeble twitter may emanate from any tree. Take a huge emerald and cut it into the shape of a bird. Insert a pale blue turquoise at the throat, rubies for the eyes, and set these off with strips of darkest emery, let into the head a golden topaz, then breathe into this collection of gems the breath of life, and you will have produced a poor imitation of that gem of the feathered world—the little emerald merops.
If there be palm trees in the garden the presence of the little palm swift (_Tachornis batassiensis_) is assured. Palm swifts are tiny smoky-brown birds which travel unceasingly through the air in pursuit of the insects on which they feed. During flight the wings remain expanded, looking like a bow into the middle of which the slender body is inserted.
I had almost forgotten one of the most striking birds in the world—the Indian paradise flycatcher (_Terpsiphone paradisi_), which certainly is entitled to a place among the common birds of a Madras garden. The cocks are white or chestnut, according to age. The crested head is shining black, and the two median tail feathers are greatly elongated, so that they flutter in the air like satin streamers as the bird flits about among the trees. The hen lacks the lengthened tail feathers, and, as “Eha” says, looks like a chestnut-coloured bulbul. Indeed, Anglo-Indian boys call this species the _Shah Bulbul_.
There are a number of occasional bird visitors to our Madras gardens. Parties of minivets and cuckoo shrikes come and seek for insects among the leaves of trees. The unobtrusive yellow-throated sparrow (_Gymnorhis flavicollis_) is another tree-haunting species to be looked for in the garden. Conspicuous among the less common birds which feed on the ground are the gorgeous roller or “blue jay,” the sprightly magpie robin, the white-throated munia, attired like a quaker, and that bird of many colours the Indian pitta, which keeps always near thick underwood, sometimes issuing from thence into the open to give forth a cheery whistle.
In conclusion, mention must be made of the migrant species. Many of the birds that come to the farm on the downs of which Jefferies wrote—the swallows, the cuckoos, and the wagtails—are but summer visitors to England. So do a number of migrating species visit our Madras gardens. There is, however, this difference in the two cases. The migrating species visit England in summer for nesting purposes, whereas they spend the winter in warm Madras, and leave it in summer before the nesting time begins.