BURMESE RED TURTLE-DOVE 235 
Young birds are similar to those of the same age in the last subspecies ; 
differing in the same degree as do the adults. 
Distribution. Cachar, Sylhet, and the districts east to Chittagong, 
the Assam Valley from Sibsagar eastwards and back west through the 
Darjiling Terai and eastern Nepal, where the two forms meet and birds are 
more or less intermediate. The birds of the Khasia, North Cachar, Naga, 
Manipur, and Looshai Hills are all of this form, and it extends throughout 
the Andamans, the Chin Hills, Shan States, Yun-nan, Cochin-China, Siam, 
China, and the Phillipines. 
As regards the Malay Peninsula, Robinson, in his Hand-list of the Birds 
of the Malay Peninsula, says: ““The only specimens recorded from the Malay 
Peninsula are those in the British Museum obtained at Malacca by Wallace 
and Maingay. The bird is imported from South China to Singapore as a 
cage bird, and I am inclined to think that these birds were escapes from 
captivity, as the species is one that is not at all likely to be overlooked, and 
no recent collector has met with it.” 
Nidification. Curiously enough there is practically nothing on record 
concerning the breeding of this extremely common Dove. Harington writes 
in the Bombay Journal that it was very plentiful at Maymyo, 3,500 ft., and 
was breeding there; again, in his Birds of Burmah, he notes that “ they 
generally breed in trees, placing the nest in a big branch so that it is invisible 
from below, and can only be found by seeing the bird fly out and leave two 
creamy-white eggs.” 
In Volume X. of the Bombay Journal I also recorded the fact that I had 
taken many eggs of the Red Turtle-Dove, though by a slip I am credited 
with saying that the eggs are larger than those of Steptopelia t. meena. Of 
course, it should be smaller. 
In North Cachar J found it exceedingly common up to about 2,500 ft., 
but rare over 3,500 or 4,000 ft., and in the plains in the Lakhimpur 
district it was also very common, and both Dr. Coltart and I took many 
nests and eggs. 
There is little about the nests and eggs to distinguish them from those 
of the previous bird, but I think the Burmese Red Turtle-Dove is even 
more exclusively a forest-bird than the Indian form, and many of our nests 
were taken in comparatively heavy forest. Some were in the secondary 
growth, which so soon grows up over areas which have been cultivated and 
abandoned, and others were in trees in more open country or thin scrub and 
tree jungle. 
On the whole, also, this bird builds its nest at greater elevations than do 
any of the other Doves whose nests I have taken. Not a few may be found 
at twenty to twenty-five feet or greater heights even than this, up to some 
forty feet or so. They also frequent big trees for nesting purposes rather than 
bushes and saplings, and the nest itself is often difficult to find owing to its 
being placed in thick foliage. 
In size and construction the nest is just like that of the Indian Red 
Turtle-Dove, and calls for no remark. 
Harington, in a letter to me, says that he took this Dove’s eggs at both 
Kindat and Maymyo in April and May, and, he adds, “I found several nests 
built close to those of Drongos, both Dicerwrus ater and Dicrurus cinneraceus”’ 
[probably nigrescens] ‘and also Chibbia, evidently built in these positions 
for the sake of the protection given by these pugnacious little birds. The first 
nest I found was in a leafless tree in which there was also a nest of the Black 
