NOTES ON THE BIRDS OF THANDIANI. 293 



(803). Melophus melaniclerus. — Driving to Abbottabad ia the tonga on 

 19th May I caught a glimpse of a bird on the roadside, coloured black with 

 rufous wings and tail, which puzzled me till I again met with the species on my 

 way down from Thandiani on 10th July at about 5,500 feet. It was the 

 Crested Bunting. This robin-like colouration in a bunting strikes one as 

 strange at first. On the ground and walking, the attitude of this handsome 

 bunting is very peacock-like. The head and breast are held very erect, while 

 the tail, which seems to trail behind, is rather expanded. 



(805). Chelldon kashmiriemis. — The little Kashmir House Martin takes up 

 his summer abode in the verandahs of most of the houses that are situated on 

 top of the hill. I am not sure that among some uf the colonies there are not a 

 few European house martins. The nests are built of mud and are precisely 

 similar to those of the European house martin. The mud is carried to the 

 nesting site in a lump on the outside of the bill and is deposited in position, the 

 bill being shaken free and withdrawn. The mud receptacle when completed 

 is lined with pine needles on which is laid a layer of feathers. Three or four 

 plain white and rather oval eggs, measuring about '78x'52 are laid towards the 

 end of May, and the young are hatched out about the middle of June. The 

 first broods leave the nests from the beginning to the middle of July. Seldom 

 more than three eggs are hatched, and indeed three young, pretty well fill the 

 nest when about half-fledged. As a rule there is never room for more than two 

 heads at a time at the aperture of the nest to receive food, consequently one 

 young bird is generally in the background and unable to procure sustenance 

 till one or other of those at the entrance retires satisfied. The parents appear 

 to use no discrimination in their feeding and it is a case of " survival of the 

 fittest", the most vigorous securing the most food. On cold rainy days the 

 young often have to go foodless for hours. One wet day I remember they 

 were not fed from early morning till past 1 p.m. Ordinarily the nests are 

 visited by the parents with food on an average every four or five minutes. 

 For days before the young actually leave the nests the parents call to and 

 endeavour to persuade them to venture forth, and I believe, when they do 

 eventually leave, one parent enters the nest and pushes the young out while 

 the other flies round calling to them with a loud note like "gip," quite unlike 

 the ordinary martin twitter. As far as I could ascertain, the young, on leaving 

 the nests, are at once able to forage for themselves on the wing, unlike young 

 swallows, which are fed for some days after by their parents. The day they 

 leave the nests they often return to them, when tired, to be fed again in a 

 desultory sort of way by the parents. The nestlings are infested with lice and 

 parasitic blood-sucking flies, and it must be a relief for them, on leaving the 

 nest, to get away from these unwelcome guests. On examining a fallen nest 

 I found agglomerations of eges of lice or blood-sucking flies at the bottom of 

 it, and colonies of lice in the interstices in the mud. I do not think that after 

 the eggs are hatched the male sleeps in the nest, and indeed the female prob- 

 ably often sleeps away from it when her progeny attain to any size. I was 

 unable to observe the second broods. 



