The note of this owl is very striking.  It may be likened to the noise made by a motor cycle when it is being started.  It consists of a series of dissyllables, low at first with a pause after each, but gradually growing in intensity and succeeding one another at shorter intervals, until the bird seems to have got fairly into its stride, when it pulls up with dramatic suddenness.  Tickell thus syllabises its call:  Turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, turtuck, tukatu, chatatuck, atuckatuck.

Another sound familiar to those who sleep out of doors at this season is a low, soft “what,” repeated at intervals of about a minute.

The writer ascribes this call to the collared scops owl (Scops bakkamoena).  Mr. A. J. Currie, however, asserts that the note in question is that emitted by spotted owlets (Athene brama) when they have young.  He states that he has been quite close to the bird when it was calling.

A little patient observation will suffice to decide the point at issue.

It is easy to distinguish between the two owls, as the scops has aigrettes or “horns,” which the spotted owlet lacks.

The nightjars help to swell the nocturnal chorus.  There are seven or eight different species in India, but of these only three are commonly heard and two of them occur mainly in forest tracts.  The call of the most widely-distributed of the Indian goatsuckers—­Caprimulgus asiaticus, the common Indian nightjar—­is like unto the sound made by a stone skimming over ice.  Horsfield’s goatsucker is a very vociferous bird.  From March till June it is heard wherever there are forests.  As soon as the shadows of the evening begin to steal across the sky its loud chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk, chuk cleaves the air for minutes together.  This call to some extent replaces by night the tonk, tonk, tonk of the coppersmith, which is uttered so persistently in the day-time.  In addition to this note Horsfield’s nightjar emits a low soft chur, chur, chur.

The third nightjar, which also is confined chiefly to forest tracts, is known as Franklin’s nightjar (C. monticolus).  This utters a harsh tweet which at a distance might pass for the chirp of a canary with a sore throat.

Other sounds heard at night-time are the plaintive did-he-do-it pity-to-do-it of the red-wattled lapwing (Sarcogrammus indicus), and the shrill calls of other plovers.

As has already been said, the nesting season is at its height in May.  With the exception of the paroquets, spotted owlets, nuthatches, black vultures and pied kingfishers, which have completed nesting operations for the year, and the golden-backed woodpeckers and the cliff-swallows, which have reared up their first broods, the great majority of the birds mentioned as having nests or young in March or April are still busily occupied with domestic cares.