e bird an easy
one to identify. The tail is black, and the wing has the characteristic
blue band with narrow black cross-bars. This species goes about in
large noisy flocks. Once at Naini Tal I came upon a flock which cannot
have numbered fewer than forty individuals.

The handsome black-throated jay is a bird that must be familiar to
every one who visits a Himalayan hill station with his eyes open.
Nevertheless no one seems to have taken the trouble to write about
it. Those who have compiled lists of birds usually dismiss it in their
notes with such adjectives as "abundant," and "very common." It is
remarkable that many popular writers should have discoursed upon the
feathered folk of the plains, while few have devoted themselves to
the interesting birds of the hills. There seem to be two reasons for
this neglect of the latter. Firstly, it is only the favoured few to
whom it is given to spend more than ten days at a time in the cool
heights; most of us have to toil in the hot plains. Secondly, the
thick foliage of the mountain-side makes bird-watching a somewhat
difficult operation. The observer frequently catches sight of an
interesting-looking bird, only to see it disappear among the foliage
before he has had time even to identify it.

The black-throated jay is a handsome bird, more striking in appearance
even than the jay of England (_G. glandarius_). Its crested head is
black. Its back is a beautiful French grey, its wings are black and
white with a bar of the peculiar shade of blue which is characteristic
of the jay family and so rarely seen in nature or art. Across this
blue bar run thin black transverse lines. The tail is of the same
blue with similar black cross-bars, and each feather is tipped with
white. The throat is black, with short white lines on it. The legs
are pinkish slaty, and the bill is slate coloured in some individuals,
and almost white in others. The size of this jay is the same as that
of our familiar English one. Black-throated jays go about in flocks.
This is a characteristic of a great many Himalayan birds. Probably
the majority of the common birds of these mountains lead a sociable
existence, like that of the "seven sisters" of the plains. A man may
walk for half-an-hour through a Himalayan wood without seeing a bird
or hearing any bird-sound save the distant scream of a kite or the
raucous voice of the black crow; then suddenly he comes upon quite
a congregation of birds, a flock of a hu