Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE ROLLERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE ROLLERS

Common Roller

Perhaps the best-known species of the genus is the so-called Common Roller (C. garrulus), the bird inhabiting southern Europe, whence it migrates in winter to northern Africa, and is also found eastward through central Asia, retiring to northern India in winter. It is in the main pale blue throughout, darker on the head and paler on the abdomen, while the back, scapulars, and innermost secondaries are cinnamon-brown, and the rump, upper tail-coverts, and smaller wing-coverts a rich, deep ultramarine-blue.

The total length is about twelve inches, the outer tail-feathers not being elongated beyond their fellows, or at least rarely so. This Roller is described as having restless and uneasy habits, and as frequenting thin woods, groves, and brush-covered places, often perching on the summit of a dead tree or a telegraph pole or wire. Its note, according to Dresser, may be described”as a deep harsh racker-racker-racker-r acker, which is very quickly uttered when the birds are squabbling, and with it is mingled a harsh rrah.

When sitting quiet the note is a harsh rack, and rack-rack, and also a plaintive high hrah, not unlike that which a young Jackdaw sometimes utters. In fine weather the male rises in the air near where the female is incubating, uttering a single rack, rack-kaak, until he attains a considerable altitude, from whence he suddenly falls, always turning a somersault, and throwing himself here and there in the air, uttering quickly the notes rah, rarah, rrha-rra, etc., which he always changes to the rack directly he begins to turn his somersault, and then returns to his seat on a dead branch.”During the nesting season this bird appears to prefer open woods and groves in a sandy district, and places the nest in a hole in a tree, wall, bank, or under the eaves of a house.

The eggs number four or five and are pure white. Of the species found in India we may mention the Indian Roller (C. indicus), which Mr. Blanford says is one of the typical Indian birds, familiar to all the inhabitants of the country.

It is commonly found in cultivated tracts, on trees about villages, and in thin tree- and bush-jungle. According to Jerdon,”it generally takes its perch on the top or topmost branch of some tall tree, and, on spying an insect on the ground, which it can do at a very great distance, it flies direct to the spot, seizes it, and returns to its perch to swallow it. When seated it puffs out the feathers of its head and neck.”It feeds on insects, such as grasshoppers, crickets, etc. Its nesting habits are similar to those of the other species.

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