858 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVI. 



be five, but at times only four are laid, and they never seem to vary in 

 type, all that I have found here and elsewhere having a white ground 

 colour, and being profusely speckled with purplish brown. 



944. Long-tailed Broadbill — Psarisomus dalhousice. 



These birds appear to be confined to Nwalabo at a height of about 2,000 

 to 3,000 feet, where several nests were found in April and May. 



945. Green Broadbill — Calyptomena viridis. 



On March 7 I shot a male of this species, and subsequently found an 

 unfinished nest close by the spot : and on the same date my Burman found 

 two nests, one empty, the other with a single young bird. He was much 

 struck by the antics of the parent, which appears to have put up a regular 

 lapwing stunt in its endeavours to entice him away from the nest. Unlike 

 other broadbills, this bird builds in thick jungle, away from water, and 

 the nests are composed, not of moss, but of grass and fibres, and those 

 found were in all respects similar to those described by Hume, being 

 built across, and not from the tip of twigs, pinched flat at the point of 

 suspension, and provided with a long hanging tail. I showed a nest and 

 my specimen to one of my Rangers, and a fortnight later he brought me 

 in a precisely similar nest with three incubated eggs, which were long 

 and rather pointed, of a creamy colour, and unspotted. 



984. Malay Rufous Woodpecker — Micropternus brachyurus. 



There seems to be very little cause for separating this bird from M. 

 phceoceps of which it is little more than a local variety. The breeding 

 habits of both are, as might be anticipated, identical ; two nests were 

 taken on February 22 and March 4, and contained respectively two and 

 three fresh eggs ; they were made in tree ants' nests, and these in turn 

 were built on bamboos. The eggs are indistinguishable from those of 

 the northern species. 



1032. Red-bearded Bee-eater — Nyctiornis amictus. 



On April 27th 1918 I found a nest in a hole in a bank about twenty 

 miles south oi Mergui, which contained two newly hatched young, and an 

 egg on the point of hatching. This year on April 4 I found a nest with 

 two eggs already chipped, and which were preserved with much difficulty. 

 They seem very large as they measure l-34xl"l0 and l-30xl'12. The 

 nest holes though in soft sand were neither more than three feet long, and 

 the eggs rested on a mass of wings of some hymenopterous insect, probably 

 a hornet. 



1055. Blyth's Wreathed Hornbill — Rhytidocros suhruficoUis. 



I have never actually seen a nest myself, but one of my Rangers suc- 

 ceeded in finding three, and brought in the eggs and the parent birds 

 alive : the dates were March 3, 1918, two eggs hard set ; March 11, 1918, 

 two eggs nearly fresh ; and February 15, 1919, three eggs fresh. All 

 three are described as being of the typical Hornbill type, placed in holes 

 of large trees at a great height from the ground, and with the entrance 

 plastered up in the usual manner ; the old bird was in each case in good 

 condition and had no difficulty in flying when released. 



Near Lawthaing, at the headwaters of the Tavoy river, immense 

 numbers of R. undulatus and R. suhruficoUis congregate every evening for the 

 purpose of roosting, curiously enough selecting bamboos and not trees; I 

 have counted as many as two hundred which had already arrived, and small 

 flocks of six to a dozen were still coming in at dusk ; this was in February. 



1083. Hume's Swiftlet — Gollocalia innominata. 



1084. Little Grey-rumped Swiftlet. — Collocalia francica. 



These two species breed in company in large numbers on the Mali 

 Islands, a few miles from the coast, abo>it half-way between Tavoy and 

 Mergui. C. francica makes the edible nests of commerce, which are a 



