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feet of the head of the sitting bird, was a nest containing 
8 eggs of Ptionoprogne Concolor. They are far from seeking 
retirement. They build commonly in trees in the suburbs of 
towns. Neem, Tamarind, Peepul and Burgut, alike furnishing 
them with homesteads, and for several years I have noticed a 
par building, on a comparatively small tree, in the centre of 
the busy grain market at Etawah. 
The nests are clumsy, ragged, stick structures; platforms 
slightly depressed towards the centre, loosely put together and 
lined with any soft substance they can most readily meet with. 
Old rags are a great stand by. In many parts of the country, 
way-farers as they pass particular trees, have a semi-religious 
custom of tearing a strip off their clothes to hang thereon. Who 
puts the first strip, and why they do it, I have never clearly been 
able to ascertain, but, once a beginning is made, “ one fool makes 
many” and the tree (usually a Babool) soon becomes loaded 
with rags and tatters.. These are a perfect god-send to the 
Neophrons of the neighbourhood, whom I have more than once 
watched robbing these rural ‘“ shrines” of their trophies by the 
score. Sometimes the rags of various colours are laid out neatly 
in the nest, as if an attempt had been made to please the eye, 
sometimes they are irregularly jumbled up with the materials 
of the nest. Cotton wool, old and dirty, stolen I suspect from 
the old ‘“rizais” or padded coverlids, thrown with half burnt 
dead bodies into the river, occurs occasionally in great lumps in 
the nest ; and I have several times found nests lined entirely 
with masses of human hair, which in a country where near 
relatives shave their heads as a part of the funeral ceremonies, 
often les thick in the environs of villages and towns. Some- 
times the birds line their nests with green leaves, much as 
Hutolmaetus Bonelli and many other eagles do. In size, the nests 
vary from 2 to 3 feet im diameter, and from 4 to 10 inches in 
depth. Normally they lay 2 eggs, but I have repeatedly found 
birds incubating a single egg, twice I have found 3 eggs in 
the same nest, but, in each of these latter cases, one of the 3 
eges was much smaller and feebler coloured than the other two. 
In shape, size, and colour these eggs vary much. I have one 
egg an excessively long pear, another for all the world like a 
goose’s egg, while others again are as round as an egg of the 
Honey Buzzard’s, but the normal shape is certainly a rather 
broad oval, somewhat compressed towards one end. The texture 
varies a good deal, in some it is coarser than that of any 
Vulture’s egg, and in some there is almost a gloss, but as a rule 
the eggs are dull, and of a rather coarse somewhat chalky 
texture, less compact and indurated than in any of the true 
