1 91 7-] Nidijication of some Indian Falcunidcp. 225 



Up to the time Oates re-edited the first edition of Ilume^s 

 'Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds ' in 1890, the only records 

 of the nest of the Shahiu having been taken were those of 

 Blewitt in the Raipur District, Cock in Dharrasala, and two 

 nests sent to Hume from Kulu. 



At the same time it was pretty generally known that 

 Peregrines of sonic kind bred practically everywhere in 

 India where there were suitable cliffs and precipices situated 

 ill sufficiently wild country. 



Layard reported it as breeding in Ceylon, Jerdon and 

 others stated that it bred in the Nilgiri Hills and other hill- 

 tracts of southern India, and many observers declared that 

 it bred in some numbers on the North-west Frontier. 



As a matter of fact, it breeds practically everywhere 

 throughout India, but is rare in the south and Ceylon, 

 absent, except as a straggler in winter, in the flat plains 

 of alluvial Bengal, and quite common on the North-west 

 Frontiei', the Himalayas, and their subsidiary hills, whence 

 it extends into the Siian States, Kachin Hills, and even to 

 the Pegu Yomas. 



Like the true Peregrine, it is of course essentially a cliff- 

 builder, and the only exception I have known to this rule, 

 if one can call it such, was the nest found by Mr. Cyril 

 Hopwood on the 15th of April, 1911, in a cleft in the sand- 

 stone banks of a river some sixty miles above Monywa. On 

 this occasion there were three youug birds in the nest, but 

 the following year, on the 7th of March, he succeeded in 

 getting two beautiful, partly set eggs (Bombay Nat. Hist. 

 Journ. xxi. p. 1090). 



Mr. Hopwood records that there was no nest at all in this 

 case, the eggs being deposited on the bare earth. 



The taking of my first Shahiii's nest is deeply impressed 

 upon my memory, for it was the long-deferred successful 

 result of much hard work and many vain attempts before it 

 happened. It was in March 1898 that some of the engineers 

 employed on the Assam-Bengal Railway got up a picnic on 

 the crest of Mahadeo, the tallest peak of the Barail Range 

 in North Cachar, in the valley below which ran the railway 



SER. X. VOL. V. Q 



