78 TURDID^E. 



" 15th-31st March. Poona. Several nests with eggs. 



" 10th April. Khandalla. Two young ones, almost fledged. 



" 17th Poona. Two eggs, new laid. 



" 8th May. Khandalla. Three eggs ; two much incubated 



and one addled. 



"10th Poona. Newly fledged birds are common. 



" 13th ,, Pair, building a nest. 



" 14th Saw a newly fledged bird. 



" 16th June. Three eggs ; first laid on llth. 



"I am positive that Thamnobia has two broods at least in 

 a season ; for 1 have seen a pair that frequented our compound at 

 Poona followed by two young ones within a month of each other. 

 The nest with two eggs recorded on the 17th April, 1873, was con- 

 structed in an extraordinarily short space of time ; for I found it 

 under a clod of earth in a field that had been ploughed up not ten 

 days before. 



" Though the Black Bobin will build close to where people are 

 passing to and fro, it is very watchful against being observed, and 

 forsakes its nest most readily. The feathers of the young birds 

 grow very fast after they have left the nest. It is no unusual 

 thing, I think, for one of the eggs in a nest to be addled." 



Mr. H. Wenden has furnished me with the following interesting 

 account of the breeding of this Bobin : 



" Begarding the Black-backed Indian Bobin, of which I send 

 you seventeen eggs, taken from eight different nests in June and 

 July, I have made the following notes : 



" With the exception of one, taken from a crevice in a rock- 

 cutting about 100 miles on the Madras side of Sholapoor, all the 

 nests were taken in Sholapoor itself, which is about 1700 feet 

 above the sea. 



" The earliest date upon which I observed a nest was on 1st 

 June. It was then nearly complete, and on 4th June the first egg 

 was laid. The great months for these nests are undoubtedly June 

 and July, but I observed one ]ate in August (the 27th, I think). 



" The birds are in no way particular as to the situation of 

 a nest. Some I have found in railway-cuttings, where several 

 trains passed daily within 8 feet of them ; others in walls bounding 

 rnuch-frequented roads ; one on the top of a wall under the thatch 

 of an inhabited hut another in a hole in the gatepost at the 

 entrance to my compound, through which people were constantly 

 passing. 



" The position of the nest is, as a rule, in a hole in a mud wall, 

 a crevice in a stone wall, or in a cutting-side. I have only 

 observed two instances in which this was not the case, when 

 I found one nest on the top of a wall (9 feet high) under the 

 thatch, and another built on the side of a haystack. As a rule, 

 the height from the ground was between 3 and 5 feet. 



" The external dimensions of the nest vary with the nature of 

 the hole in which it is built; but no matter how large the hole 

 may be, it seems to be the habit of the bird to fill up the whole 



