58 BOMBAY DUCKS 



Having secured the bunch, the next thing to do is to 

 cut away the heads of the flowers, together with the 

 upper parts of the stems, until you have a hollow cup, 

 of which the base is formed of stalks closely pressed 

 together, and the sides of leaves. This must now be 

 lined with soft material of which the strands should 

 be delicately interwoven, and then, if a few cobwebs be 

 wound outside the stalks, you will have a tolerable 

 imitation of a fantail flycatcher's nest. 



The Madras Museum possesses a specimen, but this 

 is not nearly so well put together as the one I am 

 describing. Birds of the same species display different 

 degrees of skill in the construction of their nests. Some 

 are more artistic than others. The fantail flycatcher's 

 nest seems absurdly small for the bird. This has to sit 

 on the nest, not in it. 



Imagine a canary resting on an egg-cup, and you will 

 have some idea of the picture presented by the sitting 

 fantail. In this elegantly-shaped, shallow, cup-like 

 nursery are deposited three cream-coloured eggs, spotted 

 with greyish brown. They are conspicuous objects and 

 may be distinguished at a distance of ten or twelve feet. 



This is one of the many awkward facts which con- 

 front, at every turn, those naturalists who maintain that 

 all birds' eggs are coloured so as to render them incon- 

 spicuous when in the nest. It seems to me that such 

 men are slaves of a theory. So imbued are they 

 with the doctrine of protective colouration that they 

 are unable to see things as they are. But this is a 

 digression. 



The eggs require ten or twelve days for their incuba- 



