Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/110

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94
THE ORIOLES.

more an Oriole than anything else. It will always be known, however, as the Green Bulbul. The Green Bulbul is too little known among bird fanciers. Not only is it beautiful, exquisitely beautiful, but it is a bird of talent, and it is a wag. Disguised in the hue of the foliage among which it lurks, it plays bopeep at the other birds and mocks them all in turn. Now it is a King Crow, now a Sunbird, now a Sparrow Hawk. You stare into the tree and see neither King Crow, nor Sunbird, nor Sparrow Hawk; but the crimson eye of the little mocker is fixed on you, as, with head turned to one side, he watches your perplexity. Not till he flits across to another tree and begins the same game there will you find out who has been fooling you. For this reason few even of those who take an interest in birds know how very common the Green Bulbul really is. But I cannot account for its being so little sought after as a cage-bird. They are occasionally to be seen for sale at the Crawford Market, and I once had a young one which I took from a nest. It was progressing well and would soon have been able to feed itself, when a vile tree snake got through the bars of the cage and killed it. I cannot think of any bird that would make a more charming pet, or a more ornamental. Its forehead is touched with gold, its chin and throat are velvet black, its moustaches are hyacinth blue, and the tip of its shoulder is touched with the same: all the rest of it as green as a field of young rice with the dew on it. The Green Bulbul makes a loose, cup-shaped nest, usually at the end of a branch of some large tree, and lays two or three eggs, which are white with claret-