File:Indian sporting birds (1915) (14563918080).jpg

Identifier: indiansportingbi00finn (find matches)
Title: Indian sporting birds
Year: 1915 (1910s)
Authors: Finn, Frank, 1868-1932 Hume, Allan Octavian, 1829-1912 Marshall, Charles Henry Tilson, 1841-
Subjects: Birds -- India Game and game-birds -- India
Publisher: London : Francis Edwards
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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erial evolutions, breaking up into two masses, and theninto the V-formation again in smaller groups. Nothing like thisis ever seen with the Indian sarus. Davison also saw bands,numbering up to sixty birds in each, arrive near Thatone inAugust; there is evidently a good deal to be made out about themigration of this bird, as in the case of so many tropical specieswrongly believed to be stationary. Common Crane. Grus communis* Kullung, Hindustani. One of the points in which India recalls classical times inEurope is the yearly winter visitation of the common crane, anenemy to the farmer, just as it was in the time when .^sopsfables were written. Everyone knows the fate of the misguidedstork whose virtue did not save him when caught with the cranes,and Virgil complains of cranes as well as geese in enumeratingthe troubles of the Roman agriculturist. At home the crane is now the rarest of visitants, and thecommon heron often usurps its name; and as this bird is found in * cinerea on plate.
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f COMMON CRANE 123 India too, it may be pointed out, for the benefit of beginners,that though both are big tall grey birds, the crane may be distin-guished on the ground by the long curved plumes which looklike a tail, but really grow on the wings, and especially on thewing by the neck being extended, as well as the legs, heronsalways drawing the neck back when they fly. When near at hand—which a crane is not likely to be, ifhealthy—it will be seen that it is a much bigger bird than thegrey heron, nearly four feet long in fact, and has no crestor breast-plumes, but a bald red patch on the head. Thesober grey of the whole of the body-plumage is only relieved bymore or less black on the ends of the wings, and by bands ofwhite along the sides of head and neck. The sexes are alike,but the young of the year can be distinguished by a mixture ofbuff in their plumage, especially on the head and neck, and theirless developed wing-plumes. The bird in the plate, by the way, is much too dark

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