WEDGE-TAILED GREEN PIGEON 83 
In the article in the Avicultural Magazine attention is drawn to the habit 
this Pigeon has of placing its nest under the protection of some bird more 
capably pugnacious than itself. Mr. Dodsworth remarks: ‘‘ Another curious 
feature about these birds is that, as their eggs and young suffer largely from 
the depredation of Jungle-Crows (Corvus macrorhynchus), they sometimes 
show considerable intelligence in availing themselves during the breeding 
season, of the protection afforded them by the more quarrelsome and powerful 
species. Now the Dicruri are notoriously pugnacious during the breeding 
season, never allowing Crows, Kites et hoc genus omne, ever to approach within 
their ‘spheres of influence,’ and it is, therefore, not at all unusual to find 
nests of the Kokla in close proximity to those of Drongos. The former 
belonging to the nests are always allowed free access and regress to 
the tree, but it is very different when a stranger shows himself in the 
vicinity.” 
This habit is, however, by no means confined to the Kokla, for it is recorded 
of many Doves and Pigeons that they have built their nests and reared their 
young in the same tree, or in close proximity to one in which is also the nest 
of a bird of prey which under normal every-day circumstances would at 
once make a meal of the Pigeons, parents and young. 
Mr. Dodsworth, in the article quoted, gives the incubation of the Koklas’ 
eggs as taking eighteen or nineteen days ; this seems to me an extraordinary 
long period for such small eggs, and I fancy it will be eventually found to be 
some two to four days less in anything but abnormally cold weather. 
The eggs cannot be distinguished from the Pin-tailed Green Pigeon either 
in shape, size or texture. The average of a hundred eggs measured by myself 
is 1.24 in. by .90 ( = 31.5 by 22.8 mm.), the range of variation in length and 
breadth is practically the same as in those of the Pin-tail. 
This Green Pigeon is, more exclusively than most, a bird of evergreen- 
forests, and will seldom, if ever, be found at any distance therefrom. It 
is also essentially a hill and mountain bird, though found throughout 
the plains of eastern Assam, more especially close to the mountain- 
ranges. In Cachar, Sylhet, Tipperah, and Chittagong it is practically 
confined to the mountain-ranges running to the north of these districts, 
and to the foot-hills and broken ground immediately adjoining them ; 
though stragglers now and then may be shot in the cold weather 
some distance therefrom. 
Hume, Jerdon, Blanford, and others consider the bird to be locally 
migratory, and this appears to be correct in so far as its western habitat 
is concerned, but to the east, that is to say from and including Nepal 
to its extreme south-eastern limit in Burma, the bird is resident through- 
out the year, perhaps in parts moving to some extent vertically with the 
change in seasons. 
In Simla and the extreme west it ascends as high as 8,000 ft. at 
least, in the hot weather, but it appears to visit this portion of its range 
only during the breeding-season, and there is nothing on record as to 
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