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



up in the open, with a cage of fine net-web containing sparrows 

 suspended in front. The Hawk, seeing the sparrows flutter 

 up, makes a dash, and gets entangled in the mesh. The 

 bazaar rate for a Sparrow-Hawk varies from R 2. to R 10.'* 



Mr. P. Dodsworth and, I think, Mr. A. E. Jones have 

 both taken its nest round about Simla ; Ward on several 

 occasions found it breeding in Kashmir; Buchanan, Rattray, 

 Wilson, and others took its eggs in the Murree Galis, 

 Kashmir, and Mussouri, and they have also been taken to my 

 knowledge in Nepal and Sikkim. 



Like its nearest relation, the English Sparrow-Hawk, 

 this little Hawk nearly always, if not invariably, uses the 

 deserted nest of another bird in which to lay its eggs. 

 Sometimes, beyond adding a few leaves or pliant twigs as a 

 new lining, nothing is done in the way of repairs j at other 

 times a good deal of trouble is taken to add to and improve 

 the borrowed structure, which loses all likeness to its 

 original self, so much so that it may be quite impossible to 

 guess to what bird it first belonged. 



I have eggs in my own collection from Simla, Baluchistan,, 

 and other places, and, as a series, they cannot be in any way 

 distinguished from similar series of eggs of the Common 

 Sparrow-Hawk. On the whole, however, they are not so 

 richly coloured, though each individual clutch can be easily 

 matched with many of that bird. 



The greatest extremes in length are 36*0 and 42*0 mm. 

 and in breadth 30*8 and 33'4 mm., the average of 40 eggs 

 being 40"3 X 32-4 mm. 



I have seen no clutch of more than four eggs, and several 

 of three eggs well advanced in incubation, but it is very 

 probable that five may be sometimes laid. 



It is said to desert its nest in most cases on very little 

 provocation, yet occasionally it has been known to return 

 to its nest and lay again after the first clutch has been 

 taken. 



It is a game little bird, and feeds, I think, even more 

 exclubively on small birds than does the European Sparrow- 

 Hawk. Undoubtedly over the greater part of its range in 



