22 INDIAN PIGEONS AND DOVES 
belong to the latter species (chlorogaster) if it is really a species distinct from 
phoenicopterus, which I am almost tempted to doubt.” 
Further west and north it extends through Rajputana and the Punjab, 
except in the extreme west, and through the United Provinces, well into the 
foot-hills of the Himalayas. 
Like the other subspecies this also is more of a plains than a mountain 
bird, but it has been recorded from the Palnis, Shevaroys, and Neilgherries. 
Davidson says that it is not common in Kanara, but that it is found there, 
and that he has taken nests and eggs. 
Oates’s remarks made in Nests and Eggs concerning the three subspecies 
of Crocopus may well be quoted here, though I cannot personally say that my 
experience, which as regards chlorogaster is confined to museum skins, 
endorses all that he says: “The Bengal Green Pigeon, though found as a 
straggler in the eastern portions of the Punjab and Rajputana, and somewhat 
more commonly almost throughout the Central and North-Western Provinces 
and Oudh, is really at home only in Bengal, and the tongue of Bengal-like 
country that runs up under the Himalayas, westward to the Jumna; 
everywhere else, the so-called southern species C. chlorigaster is much 
more abundant. 
“Following, I suppose, Dr. Jerdon, Mr. Wallace in his article on the 
‘Pigeons of the Malay Archipelago,’ gives C. phoenicopterus from northern 
India and China, and C. chlorigaster from Ceylon and the Indian Peninsular. 
As a matter of fact, C. chlorigaster is fully as common in upper India and 
in most places far more common than C. phoenicopterus. In the North-West 
Provinces both species associate in the same flock, C. chlorigaster being, as 
far as my experience goes, most numerous. Out of sixty odd shot in three 
days in the Etawah District in March, 1886, only nine belonged to the so-called 
Northern Indian type, and seven shot near Hansi (Punjab) were all 
C. chlorigaster. Eastwards of Bengal the present species shades into the 
nearly allied C. viridifrons, and throughout Upper India innumerable forms, 
more or less intermediate between it and C. chlorigaster, are to be met with. 
I have seen specimens of C. phoenicopterus from the Malabar coast; and 
although I have not yet thoroughly examined the question, I suspect that, 
different as are typical examples of the two races, they as little deserve specific 
separation as Aegithina typhia and A. zeylonica.” 
Nidification. As regards the nidification there is practically nothing 
to add to the description already given of that of C. ph. phoenicopterus. As 
a rule the birds build a very rough structure of small twigs and sticks 
with no lining of any kind, and place it on a branch of some small sapling 
at no great height from the ground, and often in a conspicuous position, 
though the material of which it is made does not quickly attract attention. 
Sometimes, however, these Pigeons would appear to line their nests, for 
Mr. Blewitt thus describes the nests he took at Hansie: “The nests were 
placed on toon, neem, shishum, and keeker trees, mostly growing on the 
canal bank, at heights of from fourteen to eighteen feet from the ground. 
“They are composed of shishum (Zizyphus) and keeker twigs, in some 
cases slenderly in others densely put together. One or two were absolutely 
without lining, but they were mostly very scantily lined with leaves, feathers 
or fine straw. They varied from five to seven inches in diameter, and from 
14 to 3 inches in depth. They contained two eggs in every case, and some 
taken at the end of May were quite fresh.” 
Their principal breeding-season is from the end of March to the middle 
of May, though a good many birds breed as late as the middle of June. Hume 
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