386 



THE BIRDS OF THE ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR 



ISLANDS. 



By a. L. Butler, f.z.s., 



Curator, Selangor State Museum. 



{Read before the Bomhay Natural History Society on 2dih Fehy. 1899.) 



Part I. 



The publication of Mr, Blanford's long-expected fourth volume of the 

 " Birds of India" enables me to contribute to the tSociety's Journal, arranged 

 in accordance with the latest classification of Indian Birds, the notes on the 

 avifauna of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which I made during a recent 

 stay of nine months in those groups. 



Mr, Hume's long papers on the ornithology of the islands (" Stray Feathers," 

 Vols. II and IV, 1874-76) being now exceedingly difficult to obtain, I have 

 done my best to make this as far as possible a complete list of the birds 

 hitherto recorded as occurring in the islands. Not having access, however, 

 to any large ornithological library— the great difficulty of a field naturalist— 

 I have had to do my best with Vols. II and IV of " Stray Feathers," the 

 invaluable Bird Volumes in the " Fauna of India," and my own field notes. 

 Hence I fear that I may have omitted a few species through having been un- 

 able to search the back volumes of the " Ibis " and the remaining volumes of 

 *' Stray Feathers " for scattered notes on Andaman and Nicobar ornithology. 



The gleanings from a field worked by men like Hume and Davison are 

 necessarily small, but I believe that some species are here recorded from 

 the islands for the first time, and that the notes on some of the birds 

 peculiar to these two groups, such as Rallina canninrji, Sturnia erythropygia, 

 etc, will be of interest to naturalists. The discovery of a beautiful new 

 Goshawk on Car Nicobar, probably peculiar to that one small island, is 

 noteworthy and was quite unexpected. 



I was at Port Blair from May, 1897, to February, 1898, and worked that 

 locality very thoroughly, but the other parts of the Andamans I was 

 unable to visit : these islands, however, lie so close together that the same 

 birds are met with throughout the group. 



In the Nicobars I visited the central islands of Camorta, Nancowry, 

 Teressa, and Katchall, and on Car Nicobar, the most northerly, I collected 

 for six weeks. 



To my great disappointment I was unable to visit the Great Nicobar, the 

 interior of which still remains unexplored, and on which, from the large 

 size of the island, it is probable that some new species will in time be 

 found. 



It is impossible to work these islands properly without a boat of one's 

 own. Port Blair being a convict settlement no shipping is allowed in the 



