LOCAL BIRD-MIGRATION IN INDIA. 347 



have found from ten to twenty nests, but I have not seen the bird in 

 or about Lahore at any time in the cold weather. It is fairly 

 common in Madras, and while there I was under the impression that 

 it was a permanent resident, but I never found its nests and it is quite 

 possible that it migrates from there in the hot weather. As I have 

 said above, when in Madras I did not think of observing whether 

 this and some of the other species with which we have been dealing 

 left that place in summer, because I was under the impression that 

 they were all non-migratory species. 



(895). The Purple Sun-bird —{Araehneehthra asialica.) 



Blanford gives as the distribution of this species " the whole 

 Peninsula of India from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas, where this 

 species is found up to 5,000 feet, and from Sind and the Punjab to 

 the extreme east of Assam, thence extending south through Burma h 

 to Central Tenasserim and the Thoungyeen valley. The furthest 

 point south in Tenasserim where this bird has been observed on the 

 sea-board is Yay. This sun-bird also occurs in Ceylon." Hume 

 records nests from the following localities: — Etawah, Jhansi, Saugor, 

 Raipur, Sambalpur, Saharanpur, Dehra Dun, Almora, Murree 

 (up to 4.000 feet), Oudh, Agra, Nalna, Allahabad, Delhi, Berar, 

 Hyderabad (Sind), Deesa, Rajputana, Nilgiris (up to 6,000 feet), and 

 Kurnool. 



MacDonald states that it is common in Myingyan, but Stuart Baker 

 does not include the species in his "Birds found in the Khasia Hills.'* 



Ferguson writes that it is not common in Travancore, and that he 

 has not met with it on the hills. 



In Madras this species is rare, being almost entirely replaced by 

 -4. lotenia. So far as I can remember, the few occasions on which 1 

 came across this bird were in winter, but I did not pay much atten- 

 tion to the matter, since it never occurred to me that this species was 

 in any way migratory. It is only since I have come to Lahore that 

 it has become apparent that the species is to some extent migratory. 

 From August to March not a single Purple Sun-bird is to be seen in 

 or about Lahore. In April they arrive in hundreds, and are then to 

 be numbered among our commonest birds. Frequently have I come 

 upon half a dozen or more nests in the course of a short walk. At 

 one time five of them existed in my compound. There is, then, not a 

 shadow of the doubt that A. asiatica is a summer migrant lo Lahore 

 16 



