22 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 



I have no doubt that there are keen egg-collectors now, but 

 one hears little of them or of their discoveries. If they will 

 send their notes to " Spolia Zeylanica " or to this Society there 

 is no reason why our information on Ceylon nests and eggs 

 should not be as full and complete as the material collected 

 by Hume in his " Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds," to which 

 material Ceylon has contributed far less than its proper share. 



There are a number of birds — some of them peculiar to the 

 Island — which are known or suspected to be resident species, 

 but of whose nidification in Ceylon we have no satisfactory 

 account. Let me give a few instances within my own ex- 

 perience. In liis description of the Black Bittern [Dwpetor 

 flavicollis), one of the rarest of the family, Legge states that 

 he had come across the bird dm'ing the south-west monsoon 

 at Minneriya in the North-Central Province, and suspected 

 that it bred in the Island. I do not think that the bird is as 

 rare in Ceylon as is generally supposed. I have met with it 

 at least a dozen times while wading round the edges of some 

 of the larger village tanks in the North-Central Province ; and 

 this year I was fortunate enough to find it breeding. 



In April I was prowling round the edge of Topawewa, when 



1 flushed a specimen out of a low thorn tree which stood in the 

 shallow water, and found the nest placed in the branches 

 about 5 feet above the surface of the tank. Like most 

 herons' nests it was a shallow saucer of twigs, and measured 

 about 10 inches in diameter. There were two fresh eggs, of a 

 pale sea green, without a trace of the blue tinge which charac- 

 terizes freshly taken eggs of the Pond Heron {Ardeola grayi). 

 The delicacy of the colour soon died away after the eggs had 

 been blown. In shape they are almost oval, there being httle 

 difference between the small and large ends. They measure 

 1-54 X 1'17 and I'oO X 1'16 inches respectively. A fort- 

 night later, early in May, about 15 miles south-west of 

 Anuradhapura, I was again wading on the edge of a jungle 

 tank when I came round a bush and surprised another 

 Black Bittern busy on a nearly-finished nest. This nest was 

 of very much the same description as the former, but it had 

 in it a spray of nearly fresh green leaves, and was only about 



2 feet above the water. 



