Baby koels are as importunate as professional beggars and solicit food of every crow that passes by, to the great disgust of all but their foster-parents.

The majority of the seven sisters have done with nursery duties for a season.  Some flocks, however, are still accompanied by impedimenta in the shape of young babblers or pied crested-cuckoos.  The impedimenta make far more noise than the adult birds.  They are always hungry, or at any rate always demanding food in squeaky tones.  With each squeak the wings are flapped violently, as if to emphasise the demand.  Every member of a flock appears to help to feed the young birds irrespective of whose nests these have been reared in.

Throughout September bayas are to be seen at their nests, but, before the month draws to its close, nearly all the broods have come out into the great world.  The nests will remain until next monsoon, or even longer, as monuments of sound workmanship.

In September numbers of curious brown birds, heavily barred with black, make their appearance.  These are crow-pheasants that have emerged from nests hidden away in dense thickets.  In a few weeks these birds will lose their barred feathers and assume the black plumage and red wings of the adult.  By the end of August most of the night-herons and those of the various species of egrets that have not been killed by the plume-hunters are able to congratulate themselves on having successfully reared up their broods.  In September they lose their nuptial plumes.

OCTOBER

Ye strangers, banished from your native glades,
Where tyrant frost with famine leag’d proclaims
“Who lingers dies”; with many a risk ye win
The privilege to breathe our softer air
And glean our sylvan berries. 

          
                                        GISBORNE’S Walks in a Forest.

October in India differs from the English month in almost every respect.  The one point of resemblance is that both are periods of falling temperature.

In England autumn is the season for the departure of the migratory birds; in India it is the time of their arrival.

The chief feature of the English October—­the falling of the leaves—­is altogether wanting in the Indian autumn.

Spring is the season in which the pulse of life beats most vigorously both in Europe and in Asia; it is therefore at that time of year that the trees renew their garments.

In England leaves are short-lived.  After an existence of about six months they “curl up, become brown, and flutter from their sprays.”  In India they enjoy longer lives, and retain their greenness for the greater part of a year.  A few Indian trees, as, for example, the shesham, lose their foliage in autumn; the silk-cotton and the coral trees part with their leaves gradually during the early months of the winter, but these are the exceptions; nearly all the trees retain their old leaves until the new ones appear in spring, so that, in this country, March, April and May are the months in which the dead leaves lie thick upon the ground.