BIRD MAN OF AGRA

Evening Star, Issue 22069, 1 July 1935, Page 14

BIRD MAN OF AGRA

AN INDIAN WONDER Agra is famous for many things—the Taj Mahal, Itimad-Daula’s tomb, the Fort, Fatehpur Sikri, and the Mausoleum of Akbar the Great at Sikandra. But it has something else to show the few who look out for, it—the extraordinary performance given by Bhundoo the Bird Mari, a quaint old Mohammedan with white beard, contemplative, yet bright eyes, quiet and deliberate movements. On a T-shaped perch made of two thin rods Bhundoo carries four or five birds tied to the rod by string. I do not know their species and I could not catch the Indian name he gave it (writes a New Delhi correspondent of the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’). They are. about the size of sparrows and equally chatty, but their profiles are different, and a part of their plumage is a pale yellow. The rest of Bhundoo’s paraphernalia would all go into a mediumsized cash-box, except for an old brass cannon about eighteen inches long from the tail of its carriage to its muzzle. Having caught your eye without importunity or fuss, Bhundoo releases one of the birds from the perch and holds it on his thumb. He raises it up and away from him, beckons its attention to his other hand, says a word or two, and throws a miniature curtain ring straight up into the air. CATCHING THE COIN.

The bird flies after it with a chirrup, catches it unerringly in its beak just as it reaches the top of its ascent, and immediately brings it back to Bhundoo’s hand. The performance is repeated with a small coin provided by a spectator. Bhundoo diplomatically insists that it must be a silver four-anna piece, but it has been found that the bird is content with a modest one anna.

A gilded “ beauty-spot,” such as Hindu women sometime wear, is stuck to your forehead. One of the birds looks at it, flies straight to you, removes the “spot” without so much as touching you, and takes it back to its master. Bhundoo then holds the bird high in the direction of a lofty tree with suitably small foliage—it may be twenty yards away. The bird perhaps hesitates for a moment wondering what is wanted now, and then goes off at full speed to the tree, picks a leaf, and brings it straight back to Bhundoo. Its mate meanwhile has .been sitting on the old man’s shoulder, straining forward to put a “ pan ” leaf or cigarette into his mouth, and then hopping round his neck to the other shoulder in order to take it out again.

Finally comes the cannon. Bhundoo charges it with fine black powder which he rams firmly home, and lays a little more powder in the fuse-trap near the end where the breech would be if the gun. were a breech-loader. The last of th birds is introduced to the gun and handed a miniature ramrod which it uses correctly, grasping ,it in his beak and working it to and fro with energetic movements of its Head. It then picks up a miniature cannon-ball and places it in the muzzle of the gun, but for safety’s sake takes it out again. It then hops on top of the gun-carriage, receives from Bhundoo a long match smouldering at one end, and fires the gun by poking the match precisely into the fuse-trap. STEADY AT HIS POST. There is an instantaneous flash and bang—as loud or louder than the highest revolver shot; too loud for some to face a repetition of it at close quarters—and when the smoke has cleared away the bird it still perched on the gun carriage, surveying the_ scone around it as though nothing in the least unusual had happened. How are these things done ? Bhundoo would probably bo too wise to tell, even if I knew his language well enough to understand his explanation. All that I have been able to guess from observation is that food plays a vital part in tiie performance. When the old man takes one of his birds from the perch on to his thumb he has some corn or seed in the palm of the same hand. He allows the bird one or two pecks of food and then closes his fist so that it can eat no longer. When the bird has completed its “ turn” the hand of nourishment is opened again and it promptly eats some more. Apparently it has been taught to associate its trick and its reward ns cause and effect, as performance and motive. But this only suggests why the birds do their tricks when they have learned them. It does not in the least explain how Bhundoo taught them in the first instance to do such very odd things—■* how he persuaded them to fly away simply to pick a leaf or catch a ring and bring it back to him, ai.d so on. Tho birds must ho very attached to the old man, for they appear happy-enough, and when they are released to do their turns they aro perfectly free to fly away and leave Bhundoo for over.