BURMESE RED TURTLE-DOVE 235 



Young birds are similar to those of the same age in the last subspecies ; 

 differing in the same degree as do the adults. 



Distribution. Cachar, SyUiet, and tlie districts east to Cliittagong, 

 the Assam Valley from Sibsagar eastwards and back west through the 

 Darjiling Terai and eastern Nepal, \\'here the t^o forms meet and birds are 

 more or less intermediate. The birds of the Khasia, North Cachar, Naga, 

 Manipur, and Looshai Hills are all of this form, and it extends throughout 

 the Andamans, the Chin Hills, Shan States, Yun-nan, Cochin-China, Siam, 

 Cliina, and the Phillipmes. 



As regards the Malay Peninsula, Robinson, in his Hand-list of the Birds 

 of the Malay Peninsula, says : " The only specimens recorded from the Malay 

 Peninsula are those in the British Museum obtained at Malacca by Wallace 

 and Maingay. The bird is imported from Soutli China to Singapore as a 

 cage bird, and I am inclined to think that these birds were escapes from 

 captivity, as the species is one that is not at all likely to be overlooked, and 

 no recent collector has met with it." 



Nidification. Curiously enough tliere is practically nothing on record 

 concerning the breeding of this extremely common Dove. Harington writes 

 in the Bombay Journal that it was very plentiful at Maymyo, 3,500 ft., and 

 was breeding there ; again, in his Birds of Burmah, he notes that " they 

 generally breed in trees, placing the nest in a big branch so that it is invisible 

 from below, and can only be found by seeing the bird fly out and leave two 

 creamy-white eggs." 



In Volume X. of the Bombay Journal I also recorded the fact that I had 

 taken many eggs of the Red Turtle-Dove, though by a slip I am credited 

 with saying that the eggs are larger than those of Steptopelia t. meena. Of 

 course, it should be smaller. 



In North Cachar I found it exceedingly common up to about 2,500 ft., 

 but rare over 3,500 or 4,000 ft., and in the plains in the Lakhimpur 

 district it was also very common, and both Dr. Coltart and I took many 

 nests and eggs. 



Tliere is little about the nests and eggs to distinguish them from those 

 of the previous bird, but I think the Burmese Red Turtle-Dove is even 

 more exclusively a forest-bird than the Indian form, and many of our nests 

 were taken in comparatively heavy forest. Some were in the secondary 

 growth, which so soon grows up over areas which have been cultivated and 

 abandoned, and others were in trees in more open country or thin scrub and 

 tree jungle. 



On the whole, also, this bird builds its nest at greater elevations than do 

 any of the other Doves whose nests I have taken. Not a few may be found 

 at twenty to twenty-five feet or greater heights even than this, up to some 

 forty feet or so. They also frequent big trees for nesting purposes rather than 

 bushes and saplings, and the nest itself is often difficult to find owing to its 

 being placed in thick foliage. 



In size and construction the nest is just like that of the Indian Red 

 Turtle-Dove, and calls for no remark. 



Harington, in a letter to me, saj^s that he took this Dove's eggs at both 

 Kindat and Maymyo in April and May, and, he adds, " I found several nests 

 built close to those of Drongos, both Dicrurus ater and Dicrurus cinneraceus " 

 [probably nigrescens] "and also Chibbia, evidently built in these positions 

 for tlie sake of the protection given by these pugnacious little birds. The first 

 nest I found was in a leafless tree in which there was also a nest of the Black 



