MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 167 



at Kindat, in which the following birds were found nesting in the month of 

 May : the Siamese myna, coirmon house-myna, white-winged myna, common 

 pied-myna, red turtle-dove, Burmese red-vented bul-bul and king-crow ; and 

 a month before from the same tree a friend of mine took eggs of the " Blue- 

 Jay " and Palaomis rosa ; another tree at Thamanthi was inhabited by the 

 Siamese, collared and grey-headed mynas and one nest of the lineated barbet. 

 The holes taken up by the first three all seemed to have been made by barbets 

 or wood-peckers ; one huge decayed branch which was unsafe to climb was full 

 of mynas' nests, the birds going in and out like pigeons from a dovecote. 



The strangest nesting site of JE. grandis and albieinctus was finding their nests 

 in holes along the banks of the river. The Chindwin above Kindat flows through 

 fairly level country and has steep sandy banks forming ideal nesting places for 

 sand-martins and the blue-tailed bee-eater which were nesting in thousands. 

 While going up the river by launch we were surprised to see mynas in numbers 

 flying in and out of holes in one bank. On getting out our glasses we found them 

 to be of the above two kinds. This was in the latter half of May and was 

 rather late, as the majority had hatched out or had hard-set eggs. A fortnight 

 or so earlier one could have got eggs by the hat-full, as they were nesting in 

 colonies after the manner of bee-eaters. Whether the holes were originally 

 made by other birds and then enlarged by the mynas or dug out entirely 

 by them would be hard to say, as in many cases the mynas were nesting in the 

 same colony as the bee-eaters, but others I think must have been made solely 

 by the mynas, as they ran from only one foot to two or three feet in depth. Both 

 kinds of mynas were found nesting together, but generally managed to keep 

 apart. All the nests were of the usual myna type— made of grass, rags, 

 feathers, etc. The extraordinary thing about the nests was, however, that every 

 nest we pulled out had pieces of snake skin, we must have examined some 

 dozen nests or more and found it the rule without exception, so that it was not 

 the weird fancy of a few birds, but the fashion or protective instinct of all. 



The eggs are of the regular myna blue colour, the Siamese mynas as a rule 

 laying rather long pointed eggs, and the Collared mynas slightly smaller and 

 rounder ones, JE. grandis laying in clutches of three to four, rarely two, and 

 JE. albieinctus generally four and very rarely five. 



We also found Jb. grandis nesting in the roofs of houses and in Hpongi- 

 choungs. 



No. 1503.— THE RIVER TERN (& SEEN A) ; No. 1425.— THE LARGE SWALLOW. PLOVER 

 (<?. ORIENTALIS); No. 1427.— THE SMALL SWALLOW-PLOVER «?. LACTEA). 



On the 30th May I went out to try and get a good supply of Siamese and 

 Collared mynas' eggs, so dropped down river by country boat. Shortly after 

 starting I saw a lot of Terns and Swallow- Plovers hovering over a sand-bank, 

 and thinking that they might still be breeding I landed and extended my three 

 men, and sure enough we found many nests of S. seena and G. lactea ; but 

 the disappointing thing was that the birds seemed quite satisfied with one or two 



