CORACIAS. f>3 



Family CORACIID^l. 



Coracias indica (Linn.). The Indian Roller. 



Coracias indica (Linn.}, Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 214 ; Hume, Hough 

 Draft N. $ E. no. 123. 



Both Layard's and Tickell's accounts of the nidification of the 

 Indian Boiler are nonsense ; one says the eggs are full deep Ant- 

 werp blue; the other that they are greenish, profusely speckled 

 with dark brown spots : of course they are really pure, glossy 

 white. They could not in the first place be anything else, and I 

 have taken scores myself, and so have Messrs. Brooks, Blewitt, 

 Hutton, Thompson, Adam, Cock, and a dozen others, and no one 

 ever yet saw this species lay anything but a white egg. They lay 

 from the end of March right into July, but in Upper India the 

 great majority of the birds lay in April and June. 



They build in holes in trees, in old walls, in roofs, or under the 

 eaves of bungalows ; they sometimes make a good deal of a nest, 

 of feathers, grass, &c., especially where the site they choose is not 

 well closed in, but where they build in a small-mouthed hole there 

 is usually a very scanty lining. I have found a nest in a large niche 

 in an old wall, in which the birds had contracted the entrance with 

 masses of tow, vegetable fibre, and old rags, but this is quite ex- 

 ceptional ; and again I have taken the eggs from a hole in a siris- 

 tree, in which there was not the smallest lining beyond a few frag- 

 ments of decayed wood. I have never found more than five eggs 

 in any nest, and four I take to be the normal number. 



Mr. E. E. Blewitt says : " I do not know exactly how long 

 they continue breeding, but I have found the eggs in May, June, 

 and a part of July. The nest is built in holes of trees and old 

 walls of buildings ; occasionally the Roller even breeds in the roofs 

 of houses (as witnessed by me at Sultanpore). I have personally 

 searched but two nests ; the one, in the hole of a tree, had a very 

 peculiar grain-like substance of a deep chocolate-colour, on which 

 the eggs were deposited. The other, in a hole in an old wall, had 

 some coarse and fine grass with feathers of sorts for the eggs to 

 rest on. 



" The regular number of eggs is four. In colour they are white, 

 without any trace of spots, and their average length is 1-3 inch, 

 breadth 1*1 inch. In shape they are oval." 



Mr. E. M. Adam remarks that in the neighbourhood of the 

 Sambhur Lake this species is " very common. I have taken its eggs 

 during March, April, and May. On the 24th April I saw a pair 

 making love near the Sambhur Fort, and on the 1st May I obtained 

 the eggs of the same birds from a cavity in a neem-tree ; one of 



