216 INDIAN PIGEONS AND DOVES 
these little Doves indulge in a family it is impossible to guess; all have two 
or three broods, and some of them probably have as many as five or six, for, 
with strict attention to business, there is time for this each year. On an 
average the nest may be said to take a week to build, the eggs a fortnight to 
hatch, and the young ones a month to bring up and turn into the world to 
fend for themselves, so that in a couple of months the parent birds are quite 
ready to start their domestic cares once more. Jor the second brood 
the old nest suffices, and in some instances even a third is brought up in 
it after which, if the female is still intent on laying, she usually turns to 
another site. 
As regards the site itself, the bird is not hard to please. Most nests are 
placed in bushes, small saplings, tangles of cane, briers, or creeping plants ; 
some rest on boughs open to all the world to inspect, and many are placed 
somewhere or other inside human habitations. Nests on the tops of masonry 
pillars of verandahs are common, others are placed on the walls or on beams 
across the ceiling. Mr. A. Anderson had a pair build on the corner rope of 
his tent whilst in camp; the rolled up blinds—or “ chics ” as they are called 
in India—used to keep the sun out of the verandahs are favourite sites for 
their nests, and I have even heard of one pair who built their nest in a 
dining-room of a big house between a picture and the wall from which it was 
hanging. 
The history of a pair of birds who built their nest on the top of one of 
these ‘‘chics”’ is told by Dewar in his Birds of the Plains. This little pair 
built their first nest, and reared two young, on the top of a “chic”? whilst 
it was rolled up, and when it was let down in the hot weather they stuck to 
the site and actually built another nest and hatched out three more broods 
of young ones, and after this a pair of domestic Pigeons, whose eggs had 
been substituted for a pair of their own. 
Perhaps more strange than any of the above nests are some which have 
been found actually on the ground. The first record of this kind is that of 
a nest found by Mr. B. Aitken “on the ground, at the top of a ditch, in a 
plain covered with short grass, either spear-grass, or some very fine sort like 
spear-grass. Not a stick or straw had been carried to the spot, but the grass, 
as it grew, had been worked into a very neat nest.” 
More recently Mr. Fenton has recorded in the Bombay Natural History 
Society’s Journal, that he “found, some years ago at Chorwar in Khatiawar, 
the nest of Turtur cambayensis (the Little Brown Dove) placed on the ground, 
on a large bare plot surrounded by the ordinary Indian Cactus. The nest 
contained two young birds.” 
Considering the amount of vermin, winged and four footed, which swarms 
everywhere in India, it seems incredible that any birds could ever reach 
maturity under such circumstances, for most ground-birds are adepts at 
concealing their eggs, or these latter are adaptive in coloration. 
Needless to say, the eggs are always two in number. It may be that 
on rare occasions three are laid (vide Jerdon and others), and sometimes but 
one is laid when the birds have already reared two or three broods. They 
are white, smooth in texture, with a slight gloss, a stout shell for their size, 
and in shape they are a regular oval, both ends subequal in size and shape 
and often somewhat lengthened. 
All the eggs I have seen come within the dimensions given by Oates in 
Hume’s Nests and Eggs, and their average is the same as his. The measure- 
ments he gives are as follows: “‘In length the eggs vary from 0.88 to 1.18 in. 
( = 22.3 to 30.0 mm.) and in breadth from 0.75 to 0.90 in. (= 19.0 to 
