Less common than the birds named above, but occupants of almost every garden, are the butcher birds and their cousins the wood-shrikes, the fantail flycatchers, and the pied wagtails, the emerald bee-eaters, and parakeets, the robin and the palm swift.
The commonest species of butcher bird in Madras is the bay-backed shrike (_Lanius vittatus_), a small bird with a grey head and a maroon back, and a broad black streak through the eye. This tyrant of the garden takes up a perch on a bare branch, and there remains like a sentinel on a watch-tower, until it espies an insect on the ground. On to this it swoops, displaying, as it descends, much white in the wings and the tail.
The wood-shrike (_Tephrodornis pondiceranus_) frequents trees and hedgerows. But for its broad white eyebrow and the white in its tail, it might pass for a sparrow. It is most easily recognised by its melodious and cheerful call—_tanti tuia, tanti tuia_.
The pied wagtail (_Motacilla maderaspatensis_)—elegance personified—loves to sit on the housetop and pour forth a lay which vies with that of the canary. Suddenly away it flies, speeding through the air in undulating flight, until it reaches the ground, where, nimble-footed as Camilla, it chases its insect quarry.
The fantail flycatcher (_Rhipidura albifrontata_) is another study in black and white. This most charming of birds frequents leafy trees, whence it pours forth its sweet song of six or seven notes. Every now and again it, after the manner of all flycatchers, sallies into the air after insects. Having secured its victim, it alights on a branch or on the ground, and there spreads out its tail and turns as if on a pivot, now to one side, now to the other.
We must seek the robin (_Thamnobia fulicata_) among the tangled undergrowth in some corner of the compound neglected by the gardener. There shall we find the pair of them—the cock a glossy black bird with a narrow white bar in the wing, the hen arrayed in a gown of reddish brown. In each sex there is a patch of brick-red feathers under the tail, and, as if for the purpose of displaying this, the tail is carried almost erect.
If there be any fruit ripening, even if it be that of the cypress, green parrots (_Palaeornis torquatus_) are certain to visit the garden. On the approach of a human being these feathered marauders will fling themselves into the air with wild screams, and dash off, looking, as Lockwood Kipling says, like “live emeralds in the sun.”