NETTOPUS COROMANPELIANUS 61 



which were over 15 or 16 feet from it. They do, however, some- 

 times select very lofty situations, for Gates took one nest containing 

 ten eggs from a mango-tree about yO feet above the ground. They 

 are said also to breed sometimes in old ruins, broken-down walls, 

 etc. Cripps says : " They even lay their eggs in the factory 

 chimney holes." They do not always make use of places quite close 

 to water, as a pair of these birds laid their eggs in a gigantic tree 

 standing in the magistrate's compound in Eungpore. At the back 

 of the house there was a good-sized tank, frequented by a pair of 

 these birds, and as they were so constantly present, I hunted all 

 round the tank, in every tree, for the nest. However, it was not 

 to be found, though holes and hollows which looked suitable for 

 nesting-purposes were common enough. Eventually I found the 

 nest by accident in a tree in front of the house and full '200 yards 

 from the tank. This was one of the nests already mentioned, which 

 contained twenty-two eggs. I watched this nest very carefully, and 

 on the sixteenth day after it was found the chicks were hatched, 

 and I then waited anxiously to see how they would get to the water. 

 They remained in the nest that day, but the following morning, 

 though I was out very soon after daybreak, they were all in the tank, 

 15 out of the 22, 7 eggs being addled, which I took. 



It was a great disappointment not seeing the goslings taken 

 from the nest to the water, and I have never yet seen it done. A 

 very intelligent native once told me that early one morning, before 

 it was light, he was fishing in a tank, or rather looking to his nets 

 which had been put down overnight, when he saw something flutter 

 heavily into the water from a tree in front of him and some twenty 

 paces distant. The bird returned to the tree, and again with much 

 beating of the wings fluttered down to the surface of the tank, and 

 this performance was repeated again and again at intervals of some 

 minutes. At first he could only make out that the cause of the 

 commotion was a bird of some kind, but after a few minutes, he, 

 remaining crouched among the reeds and bushes, saw distinctly that 

 it was a Cotton-Teal, and that each time it flopped into the water 

 and rose again it left a gosling behind it. These, he said, he could 

 see were carried somehow in the feet, but the parent bird seemed to 

 find the carriage of its young no easy matter, and flew with some 



