LOCAL BIRD-MIGRATION IN INDIA. 345 



Like other migrants it goes north in the summer and does not appear 

 to nest below Lat. 10° N. Jn the autumn it moves southwards, and 

 does not apparently winter farther north than Lat. 30° N. 



(598) The Indian Paradise Fly-catcher (Terpsiphone paradisi). — 

 On page 47 of Vol. II of " Birds " in the Fauna of British India 

 series, Oates writes : — " It appears to be everywhere permanently 

 resident, except in the Himalaya, where it moves to lower le\~ in 

 winter." Jesse in his " Birds of Lucknow " calls it " a permanent 

 resident." Barnes writes, in his "Birds of the Bombay Presidency," 

 it is " probably a permanent resident throughout the district, but is 

 very locally distributed." Cunningham, on page 123 of his " Indian 

 Friends and Acquaintances," writes of this species : — " They are not 

 very common inmates of gardens about Calcutta, but stray specimens 

 may now and then be met with at almost any time of the year." I 

 observed this species at all seasons of the year in Madras. There can 

 be no doubt that the bird is only a summer visitor to Lahore. During 

 the two winters I have spent in that station I have not seen a single 

 Paradise Fly-catcher; while in the hot weather I have come across as 

 many as half a dozen nests in one day, on many of which a white 

 cock was sitting with the long- tail feathers hanging down far below 

 the bottom of the nest; a point for the consideration of those who 

 believe that, in sexually-dimorphic species, the hen is the less con- 

 spicuously coloured because it is she alone who incubates. 



Hume (Nests and Eggs of Ind. Birds, p. 22) writes : — " The Indian 

 rocket-bird or Paradise Fly-catcher breeds throughout the exterior 

 ranges of the Himalaya in the warmer valleys up to an elevation ol 

 5,500 feet, at any rate from Nepal to Afghanistan. Even at con- 

 siderable distances in the interior, as about Almora, Kotegurh, and the 

 Sutlej Valley, Sultanpur and the valley of the Beas and Kashmir, it 

 is common. Throughout the warm Sub-Himalayan forest tracts, in 

 the Doon, the Terai, and the Sub-Himalayan forest tracts, northern 

 portions of Rohilkand and Oudh, and in wooded portions of Jhansi, 

 Saugor, Nimar, Raipur, and doubtless other portions of the Central 

 Provinces, it breeds, though more sparingly in these latter. It breeds 

 in Southern India, but I have scant information as to its nidification 

 there, and neither Miss Cockburn, Mr. Davison, nor any other of my 

 Nilgiri correspondents appear to have taken its nest there." He also 

 records its nidification at Calcutta, Delhi, Mysore and Ceylon. 



