136 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1891. 



rushes and form a kind of platform, and on this they make the 

 nest. 



The eggs, five to eight in number, arc normally of an oval shape, 

 but are subject to much variation ; they vary considerably also in 

 size, but the average is about 1*93 inches in length by nearly 1'4 in 

 breadth. 



Mr. Hume says* all the birds in the same swamp both lay and 

 hatch off about the same time, and that in two different j heels only 

 a few miles apart there may be a difference of fifteen days or so in 

 the periods of laying in the two colonics. My experience is very 

 different. I have often taken fresh and incubated eggs from the 

 Milana j heels, and at the same time have seen good-sized chicks 

 in the water. Again in the tanks near Ncemuch I noticed the same ; 

 and on the Saugor lake I have taken eggs from June to October ; 

 and although I did not go there so often, still I have taken fresh 

 and incubated eggs at the Chundrapur lake, 22 miles away, 

 Mr. Littlcdale notes that he found nests on the 28th and 29th 

 September containing 4, 1, 2, and 5 eggs, respectively, and one 

 containing 4 chicks and two eggs ; of these the clutch of five was 

 much incubated, but the others were fresh ; we may therefore con- 

 clude that in Western India they do not breed simultaneously, 

 whatever they may do elsewhere. The eggs vary from a pale 

 pinkish-stone colour to pure salmon-pink, but they fade very soon ; 

 they arc thickly sprinkled, speckled, and blotched with red-brown 

 and secondary markings of pale purple. 



Ncemuch, August to September. U. E. Barnes. 

 Decsa, July to Sejytember, Do. 



Baroda, September. II Littlcdale, B,A. 

 Sind, Eastern Narra, June to August. S. B. Doig, 



903. THE BALD COOT. 



Fulica atra, Lin, 



The Bald Coot is common in suitable localities in Western India 

 but is now rare in Ratnagiri, and some other places in the southern 

 half of the Presidency: 



* Nesic (aid E<jfjs "/Indian. Bir<h<, p, 594. 



