ORANGE-BREASTED GREEN PIGEON 51 
The following table shows the comparative size in wing-measurements 
of the Orange-breasted Green Pigeon in the various countries it inhabits :— 
Burma che ... 6.29 in. ( = 159.6 mm.) 
Assam and 
North-east India i pee umroe:| 1,2.) Average 158.5 mm. 
Bengal = Sy G22 wo Onn tno) 
China cae sea (OSIIBS gs (CS UBS Te) 
Madras as SO OSi-euk = 144202258) a 
Ceylon us 5.65 ,, (= 143.5 ,, )f Average 144 mm. 
The biggest male bird from Madras or Ceylon has a wing of 5.72 in. 
( = 145.3 mm.) whilst the smallest female from anywhere else has one of 
6.08 in. (= 154.4 mm.) ; thus, whilst the average bird in Ceylon and Madras 
has a wing more than 3} in. smaller than the average northern birds, the 
biggest from the former area is still more than } in. smaller than the smallest 
from the latter. 
The type-birds ¢ and @ of bisincta are the two described by Jerdon 
from Madras, so that the northern species must bear another name, and the 
earliest available appears to be that of domvillii, given to a Hainan bird by 
Swinhoe in 1870. 
Distribution. Orissa, the whole of Bengal in suitable localities, Assam, 
through Chittagong into northern Burma, and thence through the whole of 
that country into Hainan and Cochin China, and south into the Malay 
Peninsula. Beavan recorded it as common in parts of Chutia Nagpur, but 
no one else has found it there since his time, and it seems to be restricted 
to the wooded parts of Manbhum and Purulia. I once saw a small flock of 
them in Hazaribagh of which one was shot, but this is the only time they 
have been seen in that district, and it is probable that throughout the dry 
zone in east-central India they only occur as very occasional stragglers from 
the more humid countries adjoining, and do not enter at all into the western 
dry country. Harington reports it from the dry zone in Burma, but apparently 
even there it is more rare than in the wetter climate north and south. 
Oates, in Hume’s Nests and Eggs, writes: “It is entirely unknown 
in Khandesh, Goozerat, Kattywar, Sind, the Punjab, Rajputana, and the 
North-West Provinces, and is only known in the Sub-Himalayan Terais of 
Behar and Oudh, and the Eastern forest-regions of the Central Provinces. 
It is a purely Indo-Burmese type, not to be found, I think, in India out of 
the 60 in. rainfall regions.” 
Nidification. Throughout its area of habitation, the Orange-breasted 
Green Pigeon is resident and breeds, though it may move locally with the 
seasons; and it also appears to move higher into the hills and further into 
the plains in July and August, at the end of the breeding-season. 
In the hills north and south of the Brahmapootra Valley it breeds 
regularly up to an elevation of about 4,000 ft., and occasionally up to some 
2,000 ft. higher than this. On the other hand, it also breeds throughout 
the plains where there is a sufficient forest and rainfall, and is quite common 
during the breeding-season even in the low-lying Sunderbunds, where the 
daily tides actually surround with salt water the trees on which they build. 
It is now over forty years since Blyth first discovered this bird breeding, 
and took its nest in the Botanical Gardens, Calcutta; but when I was there 
_two years ago, in 1911, we were attracted, by the whistling of Green Pigeons, 
E 2 
