BENGAL GREEN PIGEON 9 
The nest is a typical Pigeon’s nest of twigs placed criss-cross over one 
another, but very lightly intertwined, and always looking as if they would fall 
to pieces with the slightest excuse. They are, however, a good deal stronger 
than they look, and in spite of the exposed position in which they are so often 
placed, can stand a good deal of wind and shaking before they do actually 
come to grief. Generally the nests are placed in small trees and saplings 
at no great height from the ground, and, as a rule, on a horizontal branch, 
or a collection of such branches. Sometimes, however, large trees are selected 
for nesting purposes, and several observers have noticed its predilection 
for the mango tree. Hume found two in these trees in Etawah, and Captain 
Cock also writes that it, ‘Makes a rough stick nest, rather high up, usually 
in a Mango tree. The nest is of the usual type, but frequently placed on 
an excrescence, or where some parasitic plant shoots out and thickens the 
foliage, so as to render the bird more difficult to be seen.” 
Rarely the bird builds its nest in a clump of bamboos, and in such cases 
it may be very well concealed. 
These Pigeons are extraordinarily close sitters, and when their eggs are 
approaching hatching will sit on them until the intruder is within a yard 
or two of the nest. They seem to be companionable during the breeding- 
season, and more than one writer has mentioned finding two or three nests 
in close proximity. Inglis records in the Bombay Journal: “I have found 
three nests on the same tree, and have often found nests on trees close to 
one another.” The same writer also reports having found three eggs in one 
nest, and in another nest a quite fresh egg and one on the point of hatching. 
The eggs take, I believe, fourteen days to hatch. I have notes of having 
found a nest with one egg on the 3rd of April, and a second on the 4th, and 
when I returned to the same place fifteen days later the nest contained two 
young, apparently about a day old. 
The number of eggs laid is invariably two, and they are, of course, pure 
white. In shape they are broader ovals than the egg of the true Pigeon 
and the Ring- and Turtle-Doves, but they vary somewhat in this respect. 
Typically they are broad ovals, but little compressed at either end, and with 
two ends sub-equal. Abnormal eggs tend to be rather elongated ovals, and 
more rarely still, to a somewhat peg-top shape. 
The surface is very smooth and shiny, if I may use this expression, rather 
than with the hard gloss of the Woodpecker’s egg. The texture is very fine 
and close, with a surface silky to the touch, and the shell is stout and not 
brittle. The inner membrane is as pure a white as the outside shell. 
The average of nearly 100 eggs is 1.24 in. (= 31.8 mm.) by .96 
( = 24.4 mm.). 
My largest egg is 1.88 in. (= 35 mm.) by 1.03 ( = 26.1 mm.), but my 
smallest is not so small as that recorded by Hume, ie. 1.12 in. by .90 
( = 28.44 mm. by 22.86). 
The Bengal Green Pigeon is a bird of hill and level land, of forest, 
scrub, or plains, but it does not care for mountains of great height, 
and the barer plains must have an inducement, in the shape of scattered 
fruit trees of some sort, before he will take to them. Thus I have 
found him haunting the interior of forests where one may wander for 
days without meeting anything more civilized than a tiger or a barking 
