556 Dr. (;. B. Ticeliurst ();) [Ibis, 



perhaps a resident or possibly some are suininer visitors, and 

 certainly I think visitors from farther north come to Sind in 

 the cold weather, at which season it may be found in more 

 desert places where a little cultivation and tree growth 

 exists, as round Karachi, but where it does not breed. My 

 only reason for thinking that it is a summer visitor is that I 

 was in its breeding-ground in winter and failed to see a single 

 one, and it did not strike me as being very common, though 

 not rare, anywhere in winter. 



Doig first recorded the breedinof of this bird in the E. 

 Narra District ; he found the first nest in March 1879, and 

 subsequently discovered many nests and obtained parent 

 birds. The nests were in dense-foliaged pollarded tamarisks, 

 well hidden in the centre or the clumps and composed of 

 sedge, lined with fine grass and vegetable down. The 

 normal clutch was four. Mr. Bell has sent me some excellent 

 notes on the nesting of this bird. He says it is plentiful all 

 down the Indus in the tamarisk-jungles, and the birds may 

 be heard singing "all over the place '^ — Sadnani Forest, 

 Mari Forest (north of Hyderabad Dist.), and Ketishah Forest 

 (north of Sukkur) are places specially mentioned. Fresh eggs 

 may be looked for in the last week of April and first week of 

 May. The nests are mostly situated in tamarisks, pollarded 

 or not, G inches to 7 feet from the ground, though twice he 

 found nests in grass clumps in a "khan^' grass-jungle. When 

 in tamarisk, the nest is usually well hidden in the thick, or 

 "camouflaged," if exposed, by a litter of twigs round it, and 

 is made of tamarisk twigs and fibre, often woven in silky 

 threads, lined with feathers or hair and fine grass and 

 grass-down ; one nest in grass was composed entirely of 

 grass-down, another of grass-fibre. The whole nest forms a 

 slightly builtj deep cup ; the cup is 30-40 mm. deep, internal 

 diameter about 50 mm., external about 80 mm. 



Barnes records eggs taken '^ by a friend " from near 

 Karachi ; I searched in vain for any evidence of its breeding 

 there at the present day. In the districts where it does 

 not breed it may be looked for from mid-August onwards in 

 small numbers, and it leaves again early in April. During 



