66 GLIMPSES OF INDIAN BIRDS 



been stacked in order to become dried by the 

 sun. 



The above form a varied assortment of sites ; but 

 there is nothing very remarkable in any of them. 

 Colonel Marshall records a nest built in the hole in 

 a wall intended for the passage of a punkah rope. 



At Fategarh, some years ago, a pair of robins 

 built inside an old watering pot that had been thrown 

 into a bush. Another pair went " one better " by 

 nesting in the loop of an old piece of cloth that had 

 been thrown over the branch of a tree. 



Mr. J. T. Fry records in The Countryside Monthly 

 a nest built at Jhansi in a long-haired brush used for 

 taking down cobwebs. " The nest," he writes, " is 

 constructed of the fine roots of the khus-khus lined 

 with hair into which onion peel and scraps of cast- 

 off snake's skin have been incorporated. The brush, 

 when out of use, was placed against the wall at the 

 side of the bungalow, being fixed to the end of a 

 long bamboo. It was only in use about a fortnight 

 before the nest was discovered." 



The above were all nests of the brown-backed robin, 

 but the black-backed species selects equally curious 

 nesting sites. As examples of these mention may 

 be made of holes in railway cuttings within a few feet 

 of the line, holes in walls, the side of a haystack, 

 a hole in a gatepost. Dr. Blanford found the nest 

 of this species inside the bamboo of a dhooly in the 

 verandah of Captain Glasfurd's house at Sironcha. 

 Mr. J. Macpherson records a nest in an elephant's 

 skull lying out in his compound at Mysore. 



