The average Himalayan house is such a ramshackle affair that it is a miracle how it holds together. The roof does not fit properly on to the walls, and in these latter there are cracks and chinks galore. Perhaps it is due to these defects that hill houses do not fall down more often than they do.
Thanks to their numerous cracks they do not offer half the resistance to a gale of wind that a well-built house would.
Be this as it may, the style of architecture that finds favour in the hills is quite a godsend to the birds, or rather to such of the feathered folk as nestle in holes. A house in the Himalayas is, from an avian point of view, a maze of nesting sites, a hotel in which unfurnished rooms are always available.
The sparrow usually monopolises these nesting sites. He is a regular dog-in-the-manger, for he keeps other birds out of the holes he himself cannot utilise. However, the sparrow is not quite ubiquitous. In most large hill stations there are more houses than he is able to monopolise.
I recently spent a couple of days in one of such, in a house situated some distance from the bazaar, a house surrounded by trees.
Two green-backed tits (Parus monticola) were busy preparing a nursery for their prospective offspring in one of the many holes presented by the building in question. This had once been a respectable bungalow, surrounded by a broad verandah. But the day came when it fell into the hands of a boarding-house keeper, and it shared the fate of all buildings to which this happens. The verandahs were enclosed and divided up by partitions, to form, in the words of the advertisement, "fine, large, airy rooms." There can be no doubt as to their airiness, but captious persons might dispute their title to the other epithets. A kachcha verandah had been thrown out with a galvanised iron roof and wooden supporting pillars. The subsequently-added roof did not fit properly on to that of the original verandah, and there was a considerable chink between the beam that supported it and the wall that enclosed the old verandah, so that the house afforded endless nesting sites. An inch-wide crack is quite large enough to admit of the passage of a tit; when this was negotiated the space between the old and the new roof afforded endless possibilities. Small wonder, then, that a pair of tits had elected to nest there.
The green-backed tit is one of the most abundant birds in the Himalayas. It is about the size of a sparrow. The head is black with a small perky crest. The cheeks are spotless white. The back of the head is connected by a narrow black collar with an expansive shirtfront of this hue. The remainder of the plumage is bright yellow. The back is greenish yellow, the rest of the plumage is slaty with some dashes of black and white. Thus the green-backed tit is a smart little bird. It is as vivacious as it is smart. It constantly utters a sharp, not unpleasant, metallic dissyllabic call, which sounds like kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. This is one of the most familiar of the tunes that enliven our northern hill stations.
So much for the bird: now for its nest. A nest in a hole possesses many advantages. Its preparation does not entail very much labour. It has not to be built; it merely needs furnishing, and this does not occupy long if the occupiers have Spartan tastes. The tits in question were luxuriously inclined, if we may judge by the amount of moss that they carried into that hole. By the time it was finished it must have been considerably softer than the bed that was provided for my accommodation!
Moss in plenty was to be had for the taking; the trunks and larger branches of the trees which surrounded the "hotel" were covered with soft green moss. The tits experienced no difficulty in ripping this off with the beak.
The entrance to the nest hole faced downwards and was guarded on one side by the wall of the house, and on the other by a beam, so that it was not altogether easy of access even to a bird. Consequently a good deal of the moss gathered by the tits did not reach its destination; they let it fall while they were negotiating the entrance.
When a piece of moss dropped from the bird's beak, no attempt was made to retrieve it, although it only fell some 10 feet on to the floor of the verandah. In this respect all birds behave alike. They never attempt to reclaim that which they have let fall. A bird will spend the greater part of half an hour in wrenching a twig from a tree: yet, if this is dropped while being carried to the nest, the bird seems to lose all further interest in it.
By the end of the first day's work at the nest, the pair of tits had left quite a respectable collection of moss on the floor. This was swept away next morning. On the second day much less was dropped; practice had taught the tits how best to enter the nest hole.
It will be noticed that I speak of "tits." I believe I am correct in so doing; I think that both cock and hen work at the nest. I cannot say for certain, for I am not able to distinguish a lady- from a gentleman-tit. I never saw them together at the nest, but I noticed that the bird bringing material to it sometimes flew direct from a tree and at others alighted on the projecting end of a roof beam which the carpenters had been too lazy to saw off. It is my belief that the bird that used to alight on the beam was not the same as the one that flew direct from the tree. Birds are creatures of habit. If you observe a mother bird feeding her young, you will notice that she, when not disturbed, almost invariably approaches the nest in a certain fixed manner. She will perch, time after time, on one particular branch near the nest, and thence fly to her open-mouthed brood. When both parents bring food to the nest, each approaches in a way peculiar to itself; the hen will perhaps always come in from the left and the cock from the right.
The tits in question worked spasmodically at the nest throughout the hours of daylight. For ten minutes or so they would bring in piece after piece of moss at a great pace and then indulge in a little relaxation. All work and no play makes a tit a dull bird.
I had to leave the hotel late on the second day, so was not able to follow up the fortunes of the two little birds. I have, however, to thank them for affording me some amusement and giving me pleasant recollections of the place. It was good to lounge in a long chair, drink in the cool air, and watch the little birds at work. I shall soon forget the tumble-down appearance of the house, its seedy furniture, its coarse durries, and its hard beds, but shall long remember the great snow-capped peaks in the distance, the green moss-clad trees near about, the birds that sang in these, the sunbeams that played among the leaves, and, above all, the two little tits that worked so industriously at their nest.