234 Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker on the [Ibis, 



in trees, but always selects one growing on the side of a 

 cliff, sometimes in quite impossible situations, at other 

 times it makes use of trees which can be got to and climbed 

 with comparative ease. 



The first nest ever recorded of this Falcon was one found, 

 but, alas ! not taken, by me one evening in April 1896, in the 

 North Cachar Hills. I was at the time out Gaur-shooting at 

 a place called Karungma, an old Khasia fort that had been 

 built on the crest of a liill some 3500 feet high, which 

 dominated the whole surrounding country. On one side 

 a large pond had been formed by a bank thrown across a 

 ravine, thus making a retaining-wall for a piece of water 

 some 200 yards long by nearly as wide, and surrounded by 

 a strip of forest. In the early morning I had shot a male 

 Hobby which had been busily engaged in hawking termites, 

 and which proved, on dissection, to be breeding. 



That same evening I was returning from shooting along a 

 village-path which skirted the edge of the cliff upon which 

 the fort was situated, when a Hobby darted from a tree 

 beside the track, and disappeared over the edge of the cliff. 

 Following her up to a point where the ledge actually hung 

 over and beyond the face of the cliff below, I could just 

 see that there was a nest in a small sapling forty or fifty 

 feet below me upon which what seemed to be the Hobby 

 Avas sitting. A Kuki boy and I then went down the cliff 

 to the tree, but the cliff was very rotten and broken, and 

 the tree was too slender and brittle to climb, so though we 

 could just see the Hobby's tail as she sat on the nest not 

 twenty feet away, we could not get the eggs. 



Above the sapling, however, was a larger tree which 

 seemed to be safely rooted into the cliff, though it jutted 

 out in a rather perilous way, almost at right angles. The 

 boy climbed up this, and reported that he could look into 

 the nest, which was only a few feet below him, and could 

 see the bird, which still refused to move. I then climbed up 

 myself, and at last induced the sitting bird to move by 

 pelting her with pieces of bark and twigs. As soon as she 

 had gone I saw the eggs, four beauties, which showed up a 



