[TAILORBIRDS]
"THE warbler tribe is the most numerously anonymous of all birds. There are several hundreds of them - wren-warblers, willow-warblers, tree-warblers, fantail warblers and just warblers - all smallish birds, most of them quite tiny, all more or less of dull feather. They are inconspicuously grey, brownish or greenish, much given to playing hide and seek in bushes and no less given to warbling or to feeble call-notes. It is not hard, once you have the hang of family characters, to know a bird as a warbler when you see it. Further identification, is a matter for the warbler specialist, and even he likes to have the bird in one hand and the textbook in the other.
It is surprising, therefore, to find that one of the most familiar and easily identified of our garden birds is a warbler. It is 'Orthotomus sutorius' - if it fails to mistify you, I might as well use the common name and call it the 'Tailorbird'. There are few gardens in India, however, modest, that are not graced by the presence of a pair of tailorbirds.
True, there are other warblers that look like the tailorbirds; there are Ashy Wren-Warbler, for instance, another small, slim, energetic bird with a cocked up tail and the habit of flitting airily about bushes. It is more grey or dark brown on top, in any plumage, than the olive green tailorbird, though both are of a size and shape and both have pale undersides, but it is not by their looks that you tell them apart, not even by the cock tailorbird's tailpins, because these are shed after the breeding season. The wren warbler makes a curious, quickly repeated snapping noise, faint but audible and unmistakable - if you hear a tailorbird making this noise, put it down as the Ashy W-W.
Tailorbirds have many calls, among them a rapid "chick-chick-chick-chick" (I think this is an alarm call or rather an alert). A loud monosyllabic "Tweet" and a louder two-syllabled "Towhee". No other bird of that size has such a bold loud voice. And if you watch a tailorbird while it is calling, you will see a transverse black bar appear and disappear on either side of the neck with each call.
The beautifully sewn nest is, perhaps, even better known than the bird. One would think that suck a work of sartorial art is the true and unique hallmark of the tailorbird, but at times the Ashy W-W builds an almost identical nest, also slung within stitched leaves. However, if there are eggs in the nest you can tell the builder at once. The tailorbird's eggs are speckled, and wren-warbler's are a deep, shiny red.
The very first nest with young that I watched was a tailorbird's, in a Hiptage bush just below the varandah of a house. Sometimes these birds build their nests close to human life, even in a potted plant on the varandah at times. So bold and confiding are they that they will continue to feed their tiny, wide-gaped young while you sit and watch the process from two yards away, provided you keep utterly still and don't stare too rudely. No other nesting bird is so easy to watch.
Off and on, for the past two years, I have been watching a pair of tailorbirds that frequent my garden. They are there all day, and I think, all night as well quite often, for I have often seen roosting in a yellow oleander bush late in the evening. They seem to like my neglected and rank garden, and to feel very much at home, but though there are plenty of insect life here to feed them and their broods they have never nested within my compound walls. Where large-leaved creepers and bushes are available, tailorbirds prefer to nest in them, and there are few such plants in my garden.
I have taken great pains (what a lie!) - it calls for none to allow the plants here to run wild and fight it out among themselves, and I am reluctant to interfere with the perfectly natural growth, but I think that one of these days, when I can find a lusty seedling and energy, I will dig pit by my kitchen wall, fill it with something less inhibiting than the clay soil of my compound and plant a 'Hiptage' seedling there for the tailorbirds to nest in."
-M.Krishnan
This was first published on 7 November 1954 in the Sunday Statesman
*One sketch of a Tailorbird with cocked up tail has not been reproduced here.
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