368 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIX. 



Lhasa regarding the taking of eggs this year : but I suspect that my 

 guides themselves had taken a few eggs for their own consumption, 

 as a stranger would be sure to get lost, the marsh being impassable 

 in many places. At last we reached the first nests. They were 

 situated on a grassy island about 2 feet higher than the marsh. This 

 island was circular and about 20 yards in diameter and contained 

 fifteen nests. The nest consists of a slight hollow in the grass 

 plentifully lined with down which is banked up round it. The nests 

 contain from 2 to 8 eggs, the commonest number being four, and 

 the number of birds in the broods that are seen all along the road- 

 side on the Northern shore of the lake is almost invariably four. I 

 am inclined to think that when there are more than four eggs in 

 a nest, some are bad ones which were laid possibly by another bird, 

 as some of the eggs in a nest containing more than four eggs are 

 always very discoloured and evidently much older than others and 

 might perhaps have been laid the previous year. I noticed this 

 in one case in which birds were just being hatched from the fresher 

 looking eggs. These birds seem to lay their eggs in a very promis- 

 cuous manner for I saw many single eggs laid on the grass outside 

 the nests. The Tibetan collectors only take quite fresh eggs which 

 can at once be known by their clean appearance as the eggs become 

 soiled with mud from the sitting parent very soon after they are laid. 

 As soon as the eggs are hatched the birds leave the marsh and move 

 across to the open water and are seen in great numbers on the 

 northern shore of the lake ; and except the very freshly hatched birds 

 I saw no young ones on the marsh. This lake is frozen over in 

 winter but at the beginning of March, as soon as some clear pools are 

 melted, a few geese and duck may be seen and birds remain there 

 until the lake freezes in November. A young bird shot in the begin- 

 nino- of winter has no bars on the head. The broad black line which 

 in an old bird runs down the back of the neck below the bars is con- 

 tinued on to the forehead, but is not quite so dark on the young bird 

 as it is on the old one. Apparently the only protection which the 

 birds have is the impassability of the ground between their nests and 

 the shore, as no attempt at concealment of the nests is made. I saw 

 a number (»f eagles on the marsh, but 1 think most of them were fish 

 eagles. 



