LOCAL BIRD-MIGRATION IN INDIA. 355 



the natives." This looks rather as though the bird was not a per- 

 manent resident in the Myingyan district and that it did not breed 



there. 



There is no doubt that this species is merely a summer visitor to 

 Lahore : it arrives in April or May, and begins to lay in June. The 

 nest is usually placed high up in a tree. By August most, if not all, 

 the members of this species seems to have disappeared from Lahore. 

 Butler says of this dove :— "Arrived in large numbers in neighbourhood 

 of Hyderabad. Sind, about the end of April, and in the month of June 

 I noticed nests innumerable on the babul trees below the camp." 

 Some, therefore, of the individuals of this species appear to undertake 

 a, double annual migration in a westerly-easterly direction, going west 

 to breed. 



According to Hume this species has two broods in the year, one in 

 January and the other in May or June. If that be so the birds 

 which breed in Lahore in June must breed in some other locality in 

 January. This, I submit, does not appear probable. Barnes says 

 that he found nests of this species in Rajputana only in November. 

 Butler records nests in March, April, May, June, July, August and 

 September. 



Hodgson states that in Nepal it lays from January to May, so that 

 its nests appear to have been taken in every month of the year. It 

 is difficult to reconcile this with the migratory habit. 



(1568). The Night Heron. (JSycticorax griseus ) 



This bird is usually accounted a non-migratory species. However, 

 I have neither seen nor heard the bird during two cold weathers 1 

 have spent in Lahore. In each year some eighty or one hundred of 

 hem arrive in spring and nest in the trees that grow on the island 

 n the ornamental water of the Lahore Zoological Gardens. 1 should 

 have been inclined to regard this as a case of concentration for breed- 

 ing purposes, rather than of true migration, had not Major Magrath 

 written to me "the night heron passes through Bannu on migration 

 north, but I do not think any remain to breed here. The pond 

 heron is a common breeding species in hot weather. ' It would 

 there Tore seem that some, at any rate, of the night herons of 

 Northern India are migratory. The above eight birds are, I 

 believe, the only summer migrants to Lahore. The Pied crested 

 Cue too (Coccystes jacobinus) appears n Lahore for a ew days in 



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