288 
examined in this month, by myself and correspondents, have 
contained young ones. They prepare their nests, as a rule, some 
considerable time before they lay; a nest examined, and ulti- 
mately taken, in Ktawah, was completed twenty-four days before 
the first egg was laid. 
They make their own nests, (a new one, as far as my expe- 
rience goes) each season ; never, I believe, appropriating those of 
other species ; but they will at times, pull these to pieces, for 
materials. The nest is usually placed in a fork, pretty high up 
in some thickish foliaged tree; mangoes, in some localities at 
any rate, being decidedly their favourites. I have found a nest 
in a solitary tree ; but more commonly they choose one of the 
outer trees of some small clump or grove. 
The nest is a loose structure of twigs and sticks, very much 
like a Crow’s, and without any lining. Normally, they lay three 
egos ; but I have once found four, and on several occasions, have 
taken nests containing only two, both fully incubated. 
The affinities of this bird, to judge by its eggs on/y, are rather 
with the Goss Hawk, and the Harriers, than with the Buzzards, 
or the Kites. The eggs are pure greyish or pale bluish white, 
absolutely without speck or spot; at least not one, of nearly 40 
specimens that I have possessed, has exhibited any traces. of 
markings. In shape they area broad oval, but some are slight- 
the carpal joint, and the greater lower secondary coverts, white, either pure, or 
with a subterminal, arrow-headed, greyish brown, or pale rufous spot. Rest 
of wing lining, pale rufous brown, blotched, or incompletely barred with 
white, the brown predominating more and more, as the feathers approach 
the axilla, and the sides just above this spot, and the axillaries themselves, 
having no white, except an excessively faint tipping, but with dark shafts, and 
having their somewhat rufous, brown ground colour, faintly mottled with a 
more fulvous tint. 
In the young, the forehead, a broad superciliary stripe, the ear-coverts and 
a patch above them, the chin, cheeks, throat and all the lower parts, except 
the sides, yellowish white, more or less tinged with rufous buff on the breast, 
thigh coverts and vent, with very faint traces of the two mandibular, and the 
central throat stripes, and all the feathers of the breast and abdomen, with 
very narrow, brown, shaft stripes. The sides are a sort of hair-brown, broadly 
but imperfectly barred with fulvous white. he crown and oc ciput, sides 
and back of the neck, fulvous white, with central, hair-brown stripes, which 
on the crown and occiput, occupy the greater portion of the feathers. The 
scapulars and interscapulary region, and the lesser coverts, immediately 
adjoining the scapulars, a rich umber brown, with darker brown stripes, or 
patches, on the shafts, towards the tips. The tail feathers are obscurely barred 
with dingy rufous, and dark greyish brown. The central feathers being 
most rufous and the exterior ones greyest, and all being tipped with rufous 
white. The wings are much as in the adult, but have the dark bars on the 
inner webs, much less conspicuous, and in some specimens entirely wanting,on 
the earlier primaries. 
