BREEDING SEASONS OF CEYLON BIRDS. 23 



Again I am pretty certain that several of the rarer water- 

 rails will eventually be found nesting in Ceylon. Legge 

 mentions the fact that two eggs said to belong to the Ruddy 

 Rail {Amaurornis fuscus) had been taken near Chilaw. He 

 was, however, rather dubious about the find. There are 

 several unidentified eggs in the Museum collection which 

 undoubtedh^ belong to some species of rail, and I rather think 

 that I have a clutch of the eggs of Prozana pusilla — ^the 

 Eastern Baillon's Crake — in my own collection. Unfortu- 

 nately they were brought to me by a young villager in the 

 North-Central Province, and I did not see the bird myself. 



I had asked the lad to try and get me some eggs of the 

 Tank Pheasant {Hydrophasianus chirurgus) , a bird which lays 

 four unspotted, bronze -coloured, peg-top shaped eggs, 

 generally on the floating leaves of the water-lily. Next 

 morning he turned up with seven eggs. They were consider- 

 ably smaller than those of the Tank Pheasant : the ground 

 colour was a rather glossy olive-brown, and they were fairly 

 plentifully sprinkled with dark brown specks. I at first 

 thought they were the eggs of the Blue-breasted Quail {Excal- 

 factoria chinensis), and questioned the boy about the finding 

 of the nest. He assured me that he had taken the eggs from a 

 small nest floating on the water some distance from the shore. 



1 went to the tank with him next morning and he showed me a 

 small nest attached to the floating stems of a water-grass. It 

 was a pad of grass leaves, about 5 inches in diameter and 



2 inches thick, for all the world like the pad of straw which 

 coolies sometimes put on their heads when carrying loads. 

 The upper surface was slighth^ hollowed and lined with the 

 fine rootlets of some water-plant. There were seven little 

 depressions in the soft lining showing where the seven eggs 

 brought to me undoubtedly had lain. The spot was about 

 thirty yards from the shore, and the water nearly knee -deep. 

 The tank had been at that level for several weeks, and the 

 eggs w^ere nearly fresh, so that the nest could not have been 

 built when the ground was drj^ , to be floated up as the water 

 rose. No Quail in its senses would have chosen such a situa- 

 tion, and, besides, the Blue-breasted Quail does not generally 

 lay seven eggs but five or six. 



