thered folk is not at its height in January.
Birds are warm-blooded creatures and they love not the cold.
Comparatively few of them are in song, and still fewer nest, at this
season.

Song and sound are expressions of energy. Birds have more vitality,
more life in them than has any other class of organism. They are,
therefore, the most noisy of beings.

Many of the calls of birds are purposeful, being used to express
pleasure or anger, or to apprise members of a flock of one another's
presence. Others appear to serve no useful end. These are simply the
outpourings of superfluous energy, the expressions of the supreme
happiness that perfect health engenders. Since the vigour of birds is
greatest at the nesting season, it follows that that is the time when
they are most vociferous. Some birds sing only at the breeding season,
while others emit their cries at all times. Hence the avian choir in
India, as in all other countries, is composed of two sets of
vocalists--those who perform throughout the year, "the musicians of
all times and places," and those who join the chorus only for a few
weeks or months. The calls of the former class go far to create for
India its characteristic atmosphere. To enumerate all such bird calls
would be wearisome. For the purposes of this calendar it is necessary
to describe only the common daily cries--the sounds that at all times
and all seasons form the basis of the avian chorus.

From early dawn till nightfall the welkin rings with the harsh caw of
the house-crow, the deeper note of the black crow or corby, the
tinkling music of the bulbuls, the cheery _keky_, _keky_, _kek_,
_kek_ ... _chur_, _chur_, _kok_, _kok_, _kok_ of the myna, the
monotonous _cuckoo-coo-coo_ of the spotted dove (_Turtur suratensis_),
the soft subdued _cuk-cuk-coo-coo-coo_ of the little brown dove (_T.
cambayensis_), the mechanical _ku-ku--ku_ of the ring-dove (_T.
risorius_), the loud penetrating shrieks of the green parrot, the
trumpet-like calls of the saras crane, the high-pitched _did-he-do-it_
of the red-wattled lapwing, the wailing trill _chee-hee-hee-hee_
_hee--hee_ of the kite, the hard grating notes and the metallic
_coch-lee_, _coch-lee_ of the tree-pie; the sharp _towee_, _towee_,
_towee_ of the tailor-bird, the soft melodious cheeping calls of the
flocks of little white-eyes, the _chit_, _chit_, _chitter_ of the
sparrow, the screaming cries of the golden-backed woodpecker, the
screams and the trills of