CHAPTER VIII
Inorder to make clear to you the swift's skill at architecture, let me first of all draw attention to the swift's handicaps. He has a small beak fit for catching flying insects. His mouth is very wide to enable him to catch his prey while he is on the wing. Very few insects can escape his wide open mouth as he comes down on them. As he is very small, Mr. Swift cannot lift much weight. No wonder his house is built out of slender materials such as straw and twigs of trees no thicker than a middle-sized needle.
"The first time I saw a swift he looked paralysed and deformed. All swifts know that they have wretched legs. The bird has hardly any legs to balance upon. His small feet, made for sticking on to places like fish-hooks, emerge right out of his body; his little hooklike claws seem inflexible. He has not enough leg between his body and his feet, and this deprives him of the springiness which longer legs supply to other birds. No wonder he cannot hop nor jump. But that defect is squared by his one advantage—he can cling to stone palisades, marble eaves, and alabaster friezes of houses as no other bird can. I have seen my friend Swift hang on to polished walls as if they were corrugated surfaces.
"Under these handicaps, all he can do is to choose holes in walls just under the eaves for his home. But there he cannot lay his eggs, for they would roll off. So he catches flying straws and small falling leaves, and glues them to the stone floor of his nest with his saliva. That is the secret of his skill at architecture. His saliva is wonderful; it dries and hardens like the best glue of the cabinet makers. When the nest is made ready, the long white eggs are laid. Among the swifts women are not so emancipated as amongst the pigeons. Our women enjoy equal rights with men, but the female swift has always the larger part of the work to do. For instance, Mr. Swift never sits on the eggs; he lets his wife do it. Occasionally he brings her food during the day, but otherwise he spends all his waking hours visiting male swifts whose wives are similarly occupied. I told my friend Swift he ought to copy the pigeons and give more freedom to his wife, but he seemed to think this a pet joke of mine.
"At last our preparations were made and one fine autumn morning the five swifts and I set out in a southerly direction, piloted by Mr. Swift. We never went in a straight line, but zig-zagged east or west, though we held to a general southern course. The swifts eat flies and gnats that float on rivers and lakes. They go about fifty miles an hour—a blinding speed for a small bird—and do not like woods because while their gaze is fixed downwards in search of insects, they may break their wings on a tree. They prefer open clear spaces above the waters and with their scythe-like long wings they cleave the air as swiftly as an eagle falls on its prey. Think of the precision of the swift's eye and mouth! While he is whirling over the water he snaps up flying insects with such ease that the space he traverses is completely cleared of all the gnats and flies who a few moments before danced in the sunlight.
"Thus we went over streams, ponds and lagoons. By the way, Mr. Swift eats his food in a hurry and takes his drink the same way. He flies over the water, skimming up drops as he goes and swallowing them at a very high rate of speed. No wonder that he hates to fly in a place crowded with boughs, larches, and saplings.
"But so much flight in open air has its drawbacks. While a swift is eating insects with such speed, a sparrow hawk may fall on him from above. Under these circumstances the swift cannot dip down, for that would mean death by drowning. I must tell you of one such attack on my friends. They were busy catching their dinner on a vast lake one afternoon, and while I was flying about keeping an eye on the younger swifts, down came a sparrow hawk. I who had undertaken to look after the children had to act quickly even at the risk of my own life. Without an instant's hesitation I plunged and tumbled, inserting my body between the enemy and the young ones. Well, the sparrow hawk had never expected so much nerve from a member of the dove family, nor did he calculate my weight. I was at least five ounces heavier than he. He struck my tail with his talons, tore a few feathers, and thinking that he had got something he circled the air for a moment or two. Before he realized that he had only my feathers, all the swifts were safe, clinging to the bark of a tree out of anybody's reach. But the small sparrow hawk was so infuriated that he fell on me with the fury of a large one. However, his body was very small and his talons smaller, and I knew they could not pierce my feathers and my skin very far. So I accepted his challenge and tumbled up. He followed. I shot downwards; he too dived after. Then I began to rise high. He pursued as before. But those little hawks fear the upper air, and his wings lagged now. To my two wing-beats he could make but one. Seeing him hopeless and tired, I planned to teach him the lesson of his life. No sooner had I conceived than I executed my plan. I shot downwards. He plunged after. Down, down, down! The water of the lake rose towards us, higher and higher every second till it looked no farther than the width of my wing. Then I flung forward a few inches and struck a warm air current which helped me upwards. As you know, air warmed in the hollow places and valleys of mountain country has a tendency to shoot up into cooler regions. We birds look for these currents to help us when we have need to make a sudden upward flight. Now I tumbled three times, and when I looked down I found that sparrow hawk drowning in the water. He had not been able to reach the air current. After a considerable ducking, he laboriously flew ashore, and there under thick leaves hid his disgrace. That instant the swifts came out of their hiding place and flew southwards.
"The next day we met some wild ducks. They had coloured throats like mine, but otherwise they were white as snow. They were stream ducks, whose habit is to float down a mountain brook after fish. When they have gone far, they rise out of the water and fly back to their starting place. So they spend the day like shuttles going back and forth. Their bills were flatter than those of the geese, and they are dented inside, for once they close on a fish the bills never slip. They did not seem to care much for the shellfish, but that was probably because the fish in the lake were so plentiful. The swifts did not like the place because the ducks' wings beat the air continually and blew away the insects that normally fly over any water surface. Still they were glad to see ducks that loved and lived on mountain torrents, never bothering about the calm water so dear to most ducks.
"It was these ducks who warned us against the owls and other murderers of the night which infested those regions. So we did our best to hide in places too small for owls to go into. It was easy to find holes in a tree small enough for the swifts, but I decided to stay in the open and take my chances. Night came on apace. Pretty soon my eyes could serve me no longer. Darkness within darkness like layers of black cloth lay upon them. I commended myself to the Gods of my race and tried to sleep. But who could sleep with those owls who-whoing about? Terror seized me for the night. Not an hour passed without some bird's shrieking in pain. The owls, too, hooted in triumph. Now a starling, then a bulbul (the Indian nightingale) would cry mortally, and die under the owl's grip. Though my eyes were shut my ears knew the carnage that went on. A crow shrieked. Then another, then another. Almost a flock flew up in terror and smashed themselves against trees. But better that kind of death than to be killed by the searing and tearing beaks and claws of the owls. Soon to my utter confusion I smelt weasels in the air and then I felt that death was at hand. That made me desperate; I opened my eyes to see. A pale white light was shining on all things. There before me, about six feet away, was a weasel. I flew up, though that increased the danger of my being killed by the owls. And sure enough, along came one hooting and screaming. Two more owls followed. I heard their wing-beats and by the nature of the sounds I knew that we were flying over the water, for it echoed back even the slightest shiver of our feathers. I could not fly in any direction very far, since I saw not more than six feet at a time, so I waited in the air groping for an air current that sucked the air of the river up above the boughs that hung over it. Alas, those owls were on me already, but I tumbled, then swung into a circle. The owls would not give up the chase. I rose further up. Now the moonlight like water dripped from my wings. I could see a little more clearly and that brought me back my courage. But my enemies did not relent. They too rose, and more light fell on their eyes, blinding them, though not completely. Suddenly two of them plunged towards me. Up I flew. The owls missed—lo! they had fallen on each other. Their claws locked together, their wings flapping helplessly in the air, they screamed like fiends and fell among the reeds of the river bank.
"Now I looked about carefully and noticed to my surprise that I had flown towards the dawning of day and not at the moon. My terror-stricken eyes had not seen truly. But there were no more owls about; they had begun to seek for places of hiding from the growing sunlight. Although I felt safe, I kept away from the prodigious shadows of the tall trees, for even now an owl might lurk there. I stayed on a slender branch on a tree-top which caught the first flight of the sun's arrows, transfiguring it into an umbrella of dancing gold. Slowly the light spread further down till the white torrent below trembled with colours like a weasel's eyes.
"Just then on the river bank I saw an appalling sight. Two large crows, blacker than coal, were jabbing and prodding with their beaks a helpless blinking owl, caught in the reeds. Now that the sun shone, it could not open its eyes. Of course the night's slaughter done amongst the crows was large, and it was the crows' turn to avenge their wrongs, but I could not bear the sight of two of them killing that trapped owl. So I flew away from the murderers and went to seek my friends the swifts. I recounted some of my experiences, and the parents told me that they had heard terrible cries of distress which kept them from slumber. Mr. Swift asked if everything was safe outside, and I thought it was. When we came out, I found that poor owl lying dead, among the reeds!
"Strange to say, that morning we saw no ducks on the stream. Apparently they had flown very early in the morning in a southerly direction, and we decided to do the same. We planned not to seek the company of other birds going our way. For during the season of migration, wherever flocks of pigeons, grouse and other birds go, their enemies such as owls, hawks and eagles go after them. In order to avoid danger and such shocking sights as we had seen before, we flew to the east and after going eastwards a whole day, we rested in the village of Sikkim. The next day we flew south for half a day and again eastward. That sort of round-about journey took a long time, but it saved us no end of trouble. Once we were overtaken by a storm, and were blown into a lake country, and there I saw an amazing sight. I was on a tree-top, when below me I discerned a lot of domesticated ducks floating on the water with a fish in each one's mouth. But none of them swallowed his morsel. I had never seen ducks resist the temptation to eat fish before, so I called the swifts to behold the sight. They clung to the barks of several trees and looked at the ducks, but they could hardly believe their eyes. What was the matter with them? Pretty soon a boat hove in sight, poled by two men, flat-faced and yellow. On seeing them the ducks paddled to the boat as fast as they could go. Reaching it, they hopped up, and then—can you believe it?—they dropped their capture into a large fish basket, and jumped down into the lake to fish for some more, and that went on for at least two hours. Apparently those Tibeto-Burman fishermen never cast nets. They tied a string tightly, almost to the choking point, around their ducks' necks, and then brought them to the lake to catch fish. Whatever the latter caught, they brought to their human masters. However, when their basket became full, they undid the strings that were around the ducks' necks who then plunged into the lake, and gorged themselves on fish.
"Now we flew away far from the lakes for a while in quest of harvest fields. There the swifts fell on the insects that flew about newly mown grain, and devoured them. I, too, ate to repletion of the grain, though not of the insects. While sitting on the fence of a rice field I heard someone hitting something. It sounded very much like a chaffinch cracking open a cherry stone with his beak in order to get at its kernel. (Isn't it strange that a little bird's beak has the power of a nutcracker?) But, when I wandered nearer the place, under the fence, whence the noise was coming, I found another bird—a Himalayan thrush. He was engaged not in cracking cherry stones, but in hitting a slowly moving snail with his beak. Tick, tack; tick, tack—tack! He hammered on and on until the snail was stunned into stillness. The thrush raised his head and looked around, poised himself on tiptoe, opened his wings, took a quick aim and struck three more blows—tack, tack, tack! The shell broke open, revealing a delicious snail. He lifted it up with his beak, which was bleeding slightly; apparently he had opened his mouth too wide and hurt its corners. After balancing the snail correctly in his grasp, he flew up and vanished into a tree where his mate was waiting for supper.
"The rest of our journey through the grain fields of Sikkim was uneventful. The only thing that is worth remembering was the trapping of peacocks by men in the forests. These birds come to the hot southern marshes in quest of food and warmth when the snakes and other creatures whom they eat go into winter quarters in the north.
"Peacocks and tigers admire one another. The former like to look at the tiger's skin and he enjoys the beauty of their plumes. Sometimes at the water hole a tiger will stand gazing at the plumes of a peacock on a bough, and the peacock will crane his neck to feast his eyes on the beauty of the striped skin. Now comes man, the eternal aggressor, on the scene. For instance, a man one day brought a piece of cloth painted exactly like a tiger's skin, so that no bird could tell by looking at it that it was not the striped one himself. Then he set a noose on a branch of a tree nearby, and slunk away. I could tell by the odour of the painted cloth that it was not a tiger, but peacocks have no sense of smell worth speaking of. They are victims of their own eyes. So in a few hours a pair of peacocks came and began to gaze at the make-believe tiger from a tree-top, coming lower and lower. They deceived themselves into the belief that the tiger was asleep. Emboldened by that illusion, they came very close and stood on the branch near the trap. It did not take them long to walk into it, but how they both stepped into a single trap I cannot make out. No sooner were they caught than they shrieked in despair. Then appeared the trapper, and played another trick on them. He threw up two large black canvas caps and lassooed them on each peacock's head, hiding the poor birds' eyes. Once the eyes are darkened, a bird never resists much. The man now tied their feet so that they could not walk; then he set one on each end of his bamboo pole. Slowly he lifted it by the middle, put it on his shoulder and walked off, the long tails of the peacocks streaming down like cataracts of rainbow before and behind him.
"There ends my Odyssey. The next day I said goodbye to the swifts. They went further south, and I was glad to get home, a wiser and a sadder bird. Now," demanded Gay-Neck, "tell me this. Why is there so much killing and inflicting of pain by birds and beasts on one another? I don't think all of you men hurt each other. Do you? But birds and beasts do. All that makes me so sad."