ORANGE-BREASTED GREEN PIGEON 



51 



The following table shows the comparative size in wing-measurements 

 of the Orange-breasted Green Pigeon in the various countries it inhabits : — 



Average 158.5 mm. 



- Average 144 mm. 



The biggest male bird from Madras or Ceylon has a wing of 5.72 in. 

 ( = 145.3 mm.) whilst the smallest female from anjrwhere else has one of 

 6.08 in. ( = 154.4 mm.) ; thus, whilst the average bird in Ceylon and Madras 

 has a •vving more than J in. smaller than the average northern birds, the 

 biggest from the former area is still more than J in. smaller than the smallest 

 from the latter. 



The type-birds o and $ of hisincta are the two described by Jerdon 

 from Madras, so that the northern species must bear another name, and the 

 earliest available appears to be that of domvillii, given to a Hainan bird by 

 Swinhoe in 1870. 



Distribution. Orissa, the whole of Bengal in suitable localities, Assam, 

 through Chittagong into northern Burma, and thence through the whole of 

 that country into Hainan and Cochin China, and south into the Malay 

 Peninsula. Beavan recorded it as common in parts of Chutia Nagpur, but 

 no one else has found it there since his time, and it seems to be restricted 

 to the wooded parts of Manbhum and Purulia. I once saw a small flock of 

 them in Hazaribagh of which one was shot, but this is the only time they 

 have been seen in that district, and it is probable that throughout the diy 

 zone in east-central India they only occur as very occasional stragglers from 

 the more humid countries adjoining, and do not enter at all into the western 

 dry country. Harington reports it from the dry zone in Burma, but apparently 

 even there it is more rare than in the wetter climate north and south. 



Gates, in Hume's Nests and Eggs, A\Tites : " It is entirely unknown 

 in Khandesh, Goozerat, Kattywar, Sind, the Punjab, Rajputana, and the 

 North- West Provinces, and is only known in the Sub-Himalayan Terais of 

 Behar and Oudh, and the Eastern forest-regions of the Central Provinces. 

 It is a purely Indo-Burmese type, not to be found, I think, in India out of 

 the 60 in. rainfall regions." 



Nidification. Throughout its area of habitation, the Orange-breasted 

 Green Pigeon is resident and breeds, though it may move locally with the 

 seasons ; and it also appears to move higher into the hills and further into 

 the plains in July and August, at the end of the breeding-season. 



In the hills north and south of the Brahmapootra Valley it breeds 

 regularly up to an elevation of about 4,000 ft., and occasionally up to some 

 2,000 ft. higher than this. On the other hand, it also breeds throughout 

 the plains where there is a sufficient forest and rainfall, and is quite common 

 during the breeding-season even in the low-lying Sunderbunds, where the 

 daily tides actually surround with salt water the trees on which they build. 



It is now over forty years since Blyth first discovered this bird breeding, 

 and took its nest in the Botanical Gardens, Calcutta ; but when I was there 

 two years ago, in 1911, we were attracted, by the whistling of Green Pigeons, 



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