MOTACILLA. 



203 



3000 feet, but it ascends the momitains of Soiitherii India to any 

 elevation at wliich water occurs, and breeds at Ootacaiuund. 



Throughout the country, March, April, and May are the montlis 

 in which they chiefly lay, more eggs being )net with in April than 

 in any other month ; but on the Oauvery my friend Mr. H, K. P. 

 Carter met with eggs both in December and January. 



They always nest in the neighbourhood of water, but, with this 

 sole reservation, they place their nests almost anywhere. These 

 may be found in holes in banks, crevices in rocks, under stones, 

 under clods of earth, amongst the timbers of bridges, in drains, 

 holes in walls, on roofs, and in fact anywhere except on shrubs or 

 bushes. The nests are always down on something solid, and that 

 is about all that can be said. 



In the middle of the Eiver Jumna, at Agra, there is an iron 

 buoy attached to the pontoon bridge, which is surmounted by an 

 iron ring, which lies down nearly horizontal, and in this ring for 

 several successive seasons a pair of Pied Wagtails nested, within 

 5 yards of the roadway, and in full view of the thousands of 

 passengers who daily cross the bridge. In the Chumbul, a Httle 

 above its junction with the Jumna, a pair built in the clumsy old 

 ferry boat which was but seldom used, and when the female was 

 sitting she allowed herself to be ferried backwards and forwards, 

 the male all the while sitting on the gunwale singing, making 

 from time to time short jerky flights over the water and retui'niug 

 fearlessly to his post. 



In this latter case the nest was nothing but one of those sn)all 

 circular ring-pads, say 4 inches in external diameter, and an inch 

 thick at the circumference, which the women place on their heads 

 to enable them to carry steadily their round-bottomed earthen 

 water-vessels ; a dozen tiny soft blades of grass had been laid 

 across the central hole, and on these, of course bending them down 

 to the surface of the massive boat-knee on which the pad had been 

 accidentally left lying, the eggs were laid. 



The character and materials of the nest are quite as various as 

 are the situations in which it is ])laced ; as to character it varies 

 from nothing (for they will lay in a tiny depression on the bare 

 earth) up to a neat well-formed saucer or shallow cup ; as to 

 materials, nothing tolerably soft seems to come amiss to them : 

 fine twigs, grass-roots, wool, feathers, horse-, cow-, and human hair, 

 string, coir, rags, and all kinds of vegetable fibres, seem to be 

 indilferently used. 



It is impossible to generalize satisfactorily in regard to the 

 nidification of such irregidar-minded birds as these, and it will be 

 well to quote a rnunber of different accounts to illustrate the 

 matter properly ; and I need now only add that four is the normal 

 number of the eggs, that I have twice (out of perhaps a hundred 

 nests) met with five, and that I have frequently found only three 

 more or less incubated, as well as only three young ones. 



Pirst, to quote an old note of my own recorded at Etawah : — 

 " Fouud three nests of this bird on the 14th March, 1867, on the 



