BENGAL GREEN PIGEON 9 



The nest is a typical Pigeon's nest of twigs placed criss-cross over one 

 another, but very hghtly intertwined, and always looking as if they would fall 

 to pieces with the sUghtest excuse. They are, however, a good deal stronger 

 than they look, and in spite of the exposed position in which they are so often 

 placed, can stand a good deal of wind and shaking before they do actually 

 come to grief. Generally the nests are placed in small trees and sapluigs 

 at no great height from the ground, and, as a rule, on a horizontal branch, 

 or a collection of such branches. Sometimes, however, large trees are selected 

 for nesting purposes, and several observers have noticed its predilection 

 for the mango tree. Hume found two in these trees in Etawah, and Captain 

 Cock also writes that it, " Makes a rough stick nest, rather high up, usually 

 in a Mango tree. The nest is of the usual type, but frequently placed on 

 an excrescence, or where some parasitic plant shoots out and thickens the 

 foliage, so as to render the bird more diificult to be seen." 



Rarely the bird builds its nest in a clump of bamboos, and in such cases 

 it may be very well concealed. 



These Pigeons are extraordinarily close sitters, and when their eggs are 

 approaching hatchmg will sit on them mitil the intruder is within a yard 

 or two of the nest. They seem to be companionable during the breeding- 

 season, and more than one waiter has mentioned finding two or three nests 

 in close proximity. Inglis records in the Bombay Journal : " I have found 

 three nests on the same tree, and have often found nests on trees close to 

 one another." The same writer also reports having found three eggs in one 

 nest, and in another nest a quite fresh egg and one on the point of hatching. 



The eggs take, I beheve, fourteen days to hatch. I have notes of having 

 found a nest with one egg on the 3rd of April, and a second on the ith, and 

 when I returned to the same place fifteen days later the nest contained two 

 young, apparently about a day old. 



The number of eggs laid is invariably two, and they are, of course, pure 

 white. In shape they are broader ovals than the egg of the true Pigeon 

 and the Ring- and Turtle-Doves, but they vary somewhat in this respect. 

 Typically they are broad ovals, but little compressed at either end, and with 

 two ends sub-equal. Abnormal eggs tend to be rather elongated ovals, and 

 more rarely stiU, to a somewhat peg-top shape. 



The surface is very smooth and shiny, if I ma}' use this expression, rather 

 than with the hard gloss of the Woodpecker's egg. The texture is very fine 

 and close, with a surface sUky to the touch, and the shell is stout and not 

 brittle. The inner membrane is as pure a white as the outside shell. 



The average of nearly 100 eggs is 1.24 in. (=31.8 mm.) by .96 

 ( = 24.4 mm.). 



My largest egg is 1.38 in. ( = 35 mm.) by 1.03 ( = 26.1 mm.), but my 

 smallest is not so small as that recorded by Hume, i.e. 1.12 in. by .90 

 ( = 28.44 mm. by 22.86). 



The Bengal Green Pigeon is a bird of hUl and level land, of forest, 

 scrub, or plains, but it does not care for mountains of great height, 

 and the barer plains must have an inducement, in the shape of scattered 

 fruit trees of some sort, before he wiU take to them. Thus I have 

 found him haunting the interior of forests where one may wander for 

 days without meeting anything more civilized than a tiger or a barking 



