17G NATURAL HISTORY. 



My transfer however to another district seemed at first to make 

 this impossible. Thanks however to good early rain, the population 

 were too much taken up with their farming to quarrel with their neigh- 

 bours, and I found I could get away for a week without any great 

 inconvenience to any one. 



It was therefore with a light heart that on the afternoon of Satur- 

 day, July 10th, I left my head-quarters on a week's casual leave 

 en route to the Ghats. 



A rapid drive of some thirty odd miles brought me to Dhulia, the 

 head-qnarters of Khandesh, in time for dinner, and I was fortunate 

 enough to escape without any rain, though the country near Dhulia 

 was almost under water, and I could see heavy rain following me 

 nearly all the way. 



The crops were looking well as long as it was light enough to see 

 them ; but bird-life was not abundant, and all that I saw worthy of 

 notice was a solitary Adjutant (L. argalus) accompanying some Grey 

 Cliff-vultures in a banquet on a dead cow. 



The Adjutant is never common here, and during the five or six years 

 I have known these districts, I have not seen a dozen in all, and always 

 single specimens, and that during the rains and cold-weather. The 

 Adjutants in the east of India seem mostly to resort to Burmah for 

 breeding, and breed there in October; but no one seems to have found 

 out where the birds from Western India breed or when. 



A little further on I saw a Roller (G. indica, not C. garrula). This 

 was distinctly exceptional. During the cold-weather indica is very 

 common everywhere in Khandesh and Nasik ; but in the hot-weather 

 it leaves the plains and breeds abundantly in the Satpuras and Ghats, 

 and at the beginning of the rains it appears to leave the district (plains 

 and hills alike). From the beginning of June till the middle of 

 August one hardly ever sees a Roller. About that date, C. gnrrula 

 appears about Dhulia in some numbers and remains till October, in the 

 beginning of which month and the end of September G. indica also 

 returns. Sunday, the 11th, I spent in hospitable Dhulia, and the juve- 

 nile Bhil population as usual brought a variety of nests and eggs. 

 These consisted of the usual common Dhulia birds — Priniae (hodg- 

 so?ii or gracilis) and Steward (for the first two birds are one spe- 

 cies), Franklinia buchananij Pericrocotus peregrinus, Caprimulgus asia- 

 Ucusj Drymceca inornata, and Sylvatica^ &c, fyc, the only nest 

 requiring special notice being one of Volvocivora sykesi. This pretty 

 little Cuckoo Shrike is one of the earliest migrants in the rains, arriving 



