NOTES ON NIDIFICATION IN KANARA. 335 



9th February, 1890, at Kutgal in the Kumta Taluka. It contained 

 two hard-set eggs. 



179.— THE MADRAS RUFOUS WOODPECKER. 



Micnopternus gularis, Jerd. 



This is a common Woodpecker in Kanara, and though I have 

 never taken their eggs, I have often found their nests. I think 

 the birds continue to inhabit their old nests, as I have found 

 them about a nest I had known for months, and there were no signs 

 of any intention to lay again. The birds make a small tunnel into 

 one of the nests of a small tree ant, and hollow out a largish chamber. 

 I have always found the ants still there, and have been well stung 

 on examining the nest -hole. I think this bird breeds as a rule in 

 the rains, but in the middle of March a villager brought me 3 wood- 

 pecker eggs ; I could not properly understand his dialect, and on his 

 stating that the nest was an immense distance off [to enhance the 

 value by proving he had taken a deal of trouble in finding it], as a 

 protest against his taking the eggs himself instead of bringing me 

 to them, I flung them on the ground. One of my sepoys afterwards 

 told me, the same man had told him he had got them from an ant's 

 nest half a mile off. This was no doubt the truth, but I was too 

 disgusted to go to the place to see. 



THE GREAT BLACK WOODPECKER. 



Thriponax Eochoni, Jerd. 

 This Woodpecker is not common, but one sees it occasionally in all 

 the heavy jungles. I have never taken the eggs, but I saw a pair 

 close to an enormous dead and rotten tree at Kutgal, in February. 

 The tree contained several old nest holes, and one of the birds entered 

 and left one of these. The tree was so rotten that no one could pos- 

 sibly climb it ; I, however, visited it again in the early morning and 

 again in the evening, and on both occasions fired a shot at it ; as on 

 neither occasion did I see anything of the birds, they cannot have 

 been breeding there at that time, though no doubt it was an old nest, 

 which like most other woodpeckers, they occasionally return to. At 

 Sirsi, at the very end of February, two eggs, apparently Woodpecker's, 

 were brought to me late one evening. The man said he had taken 



