14 Mr. A. Hume on Indian Ornithology. 



The King-Crows are very jealous of the approach of other birds, 

 even of their own species^ to a nest in which they have eggs; 

 and many a little family would this year have been safely reared 

 and their ovate cradles have escaped the plundering hands of 

 my shikarees, had not attention been invariably called to the 

 whereabouts of the nest by the pertinacious and vicious rushes 

 of one or other of the parents from near their nest at every 

 feathered thing that passed by them. 



As we stood waiting for the eggs of the King-Crow to be 

 brought us, a speckled female Koil [Eudynamis orientalis) sud- 

 denly emerged from a group of mango-trees in our own com- 

 pound, pursued by several Crows. This bird is famous in Indian 

 song as the harbinger of that glad rainy season when, to quote 

 the Indian poet, the sun-parched widowed earth puts off her 

 withered dust-soiled weeds, and, soon to become the joyful 

 mother of autumn's harvests, dons a fresh bridal robe of green. 

 Throughout the rains the loudly whistled cry " Who are you ?" 

 rings through every copse, and has from very early times been 

 as great a favourite with the people of Hindo^tan as ever that 

 of the Cuckoo was with us. When we came to inspect the 

 clump of mangos out of which the angry Crows had come, we 

 found in them no less than seven of their nests, and in two of 

 these discovered unmistakable eggs of the Koil. Did these two 

 both belong to the fugitive female, discovered when, for the third 

 time, she made the attempt ? Were they the eggs of sister 

 adventuresses, who had put her up to the locality as one in which 

 business was likely to be done ? I confess I am not deep enough 

 in the secrets of the mottled ladies, upon whom respectable 

 Crow matrons doubtless look as the worst of "social evils", to 

 answer these questions; but about the eggs there could be "no 

 deception." These eggs (and others that we have obtained on 

 previous occasions, in more than one instance two out of the 

 same Crow's nest) measured from 1-093 to 1*187 in. in length, 

 and from '875 to '937 in breadth. One egg had a pale olive- 

 green ground, thickly blotched and spotted with two shades 

 of brown, the one being somewhat purplish and the other yel- 

 lowish ; the blotches and spots were entirely confluent at the 

 large end. Of the other, the ground-colour was a pale sea- 



