The green barbet calls spasmodically throughout December, but, as a rule, only in the afternoon.  Towards the end of the month some of the nuthatches and the robins begin to tune up.  On cloudy days the king-crows utter the soft calls that are usually associated with the rainy season.

December, like November, although climatically very pleasant, is a month in which the activities of the feathered folk are at a comparatively low ebb.  The cold, however, sends to India thousands of immigrants.  Most of these spend the whole winter in the plains of India.  Of such are the redstart, the grey-headed flycatcher, the snipe and the majority of the game birds.  Besides these regular migrants there are many species which spend a few days or weeks in the plains, leaving the Himalayas when the weather there becomes very inclement.  Thus the ornithologist in the plains of Northern India lives in a state of expectancy from November to January.  Every time he walks in the fields he hopes to see some uncommon winter visitor.  It may be a small-billed mountain thrush, a blue rock-thrush, a wall-creeper, a black bulbul, a flycatcher-warbler, a green-backed tit, a verditer flycatcher, a black-throated or a grey-winged ouzel, a dark-grey bush-chat, a pine-bunting, a Himalayan whistling thrush, or even a white-capped redstart.  Indeed, there is scarcely a species which inhabits the lower ranges of the Himalayas that may not be driven to the plains by a heavy fall of snow on the mountains.  Naturally it is in the districts nearest the hills that most of these rare birds are seen—­but there is no part of Northern India in which they may not occur.

The nesting activity of birds in Upper India attains its zenith in May, and then declines until it reaches its nadir in November.  With December it begins again to increase.

Of those birds whose nests were described last month the white-backed vulture, Pallas’s fishing-eagle, the tawny eagle, the sand-martin and the black-necked stork are likely to be found with eggs or young in the present month.

December marks the beginning of the nesting season for three large owls—­the brown fish-owl, the rock horned-owl and the dusky horned-owl.  The brown fish-owl (Ketupa ceylonensis) is a bird almost as large as a kite.  It has bright orange orbs and long, pointed aigrettes.  Its legs are devoid of feathers.  According to Blanford it has a dismal cry like haw, haw, haw, ho.  “Eha” describes the call as a ghostly hoot—­a hoo hoo hoo, far-reaching, but coming from nowhere in particular.  These two descriptions do not seem to agree.  There is nothing unusual in this.

The descriptions of the calls of the nocturnal birds of prey given by India ornithologists are notoriously unsatisfactory.  This is perhaps not surprising when we consider the wealth of bird life in this country.  It is no easy matter to ascertain the perpetrators of the various sounds of the night, and, when the naturalist has succeeded in fixing the author of any call, he finds himself confronted with the difficult task of describing the sound in question.  Bearing in mind the way in which human interjections baffle the average writer, we cannot be surprised at the poor success that crowns the endeavours of the naturalist to syllabise bird notes.