320 



at a height of about 30 feet from the ground. Not made, as many 

 Barbets' nests are made, on the underside of a branch, but bored 

 into the upright stem for about 3 inches, terminating in a natural 

 hollow, at the bottom of which, on the bare wood, lay three fresh 

 eggs, broad ovals, dull white, but only here and there with faint 

 traces of a gloss. A second nest of the 3rd of March at Meea- 

 wuddy contained two young ones. 



" A third, found on the 26th March on the bank of the Maigla 

 choung, contained one young one, apparently just hatched, and one 

 very hard-set egg. This was in a hole in a dead teak-tree, at about 

 20 feet from the ground, and was, like the first, an entrance bored 

 into a natural hollow, which was unliued. 



"I am glad to say that, though the getting-out of the egg 

 necessarily enlarged the entrance-hole, the birds did not desert 

 their young one, for I saw them feeding it the next day. The four 

 eggs procured measured 1'35 x 1-06, 1-30 xl'05, 1'32 x 1'05, and 

 1-37 X 1-01." 



The eggs are in shape broad ovals, always somewhat, often con- 

 spicuously, pointed towards the small end. In colour they are 

 pure dull white, with only here and there in some eggs a faint trace 

 of gloss. 



Cyanops asiatica (Lath.). The Blue-faced Barbet. 



Cyanops asiatica (Lath.\ Jerd. JS. Ind. i, p. 313; Hume, Rouyh 

 'Draft N. Sf K no. 195. 



Mr. R. Thompson says : " The Blue-throated Barbet breeds in 

 April and May, digging out holes in the decayed branches of 

 trees. 



"It is a common breeder in our Kumaon forests, keeping 

 entirely to the hilly regions. ' Kuttooruk, kuttooruk, kuttooruk ' 

 is its cry." 



Mr. Blyth tells us that in Lower Bengal it has two broods, one 

 in the month of May, the other in November. 



Colonel Gr. F. L. Marshall says that his shikaree found a nest- 

 hole in Kalsi Grove (Dehra Doon). " The entrance was on the 

 underside of a bough about 15 inches in girth, and near the top of 

 the tree. The hole was circular and about 10 inches in depth." 



Several nests found in May in the neighbourhood of Darjeeliug 

 each contained three fresh eggs. One was in a hole in a large tree 

 about 6 feet from the ground ; two others were in holes in large 

 branches of trees. The one first mentioned had a large pad of 

 shavings, apparently taken off by a plane, and collected by the 

 birds. The others had scraps of decayed wood as a bed for the 

 nest. 



Another nest-hole found in July, containing three fresh eggs, 

 had also in it a large pad consisting almost exclusively of coarse 

 vegetable fibre, apparently strips of the bark of some herbaceous 

 plant, but a few pieces of grass, a piece of red wool, and one or 

 two other similar miscellaneous scraps are intermingled in the pad. 



