MEKOPS. 61 



Major C. T. Binghain writes : " Breeds both at Allahabad and 

 at Delhi in April and May, choosing sometimes extraordinary sites 

 for its nest-holes. In 1873, when the musketry instruction of my 

 regiment was being carried on during the hot weather, I observed 

 several nest-holes of this bird in the front face of the butts of the 

 N.I. range at Allahabad; and they (the birds) seemed utterly 

 regardless of the bullets that every now and then came and buried 

 themselves with a loud thud in the earth close beside them." 



Colonel Butler says : " 1 found a nest of this Bee-eater at 

 Deesa on the 29th March, containing five eggs. An artificial 

 mud-bank, about a foot high, had been made to mark the limits of 

 the Badminton Court in the Artillery Mess compound, and it was 

 in the bank that the eggs were deposited. The hole which the 

 birds had excavated commenced near the bottom of the bank, and 

 inclined gradually downwards for about four feet. In diameter 

 for about the first 3| feet it was not more than two inches, but 

 from that point it grew wider and wider, and ended in a small 

 round chamber about six inches in diameter, and in the centre of 

 this chamber the eggs were laid upon the bare ground and without 

 any vestige of a nest. The cock bird invariably sat upon the 

 Badminton net when people were not playing (and on a tree close 

 by when the court was used), whilst the hen was sitting. I fancy 

 this was one of the first nests of the season." 



Mr. Benjamin Aitken sends me the following remarks : " I 

 have no notes of the ni din cation of this species, but I have been 

 much struck with the way they totally disappear during the hot 

 season, in common with the King-Crow and some Shrikes. In 

 Poona, weeks after the last of them has been seen in cantonments, 

 an occasional pair may be met with in some sheltered spot a few 

 miles out. 



" But with regard to the island of Bombay I have no doubt 

 whatever that the Common Bee-eater migrates as verily as the 

 Common Swallow or the Grey Wagtail. I have been twelve years 

 in Bombay, and never saw so much as a feather of them from April 

 to September. Some day in the first week of June their pleasant 

 call is heard in all directions, and awakens associations like the 

 call of the Cuckoo. Now they are always to be seen in the 

 cantonments of Poona as early as the second half of May. 



" In my notes I have the 6th October, 1865, and the 9th October, 

 1866, recorded as the days of the first appearance of the Bee-eater 

 in Bombay in those years. The date of their disappearance in 

 1867 was the 14th March. 



" I never saw any Bee-eater but M. viridis in Bombay, but my 

 brother, Mr. E. Aitken, once saw a solitary individual of one of 

 the larger species. He was quite positive about it, so it must have 

 been a stray visitor/' 



Mr. Davison remarks : " Dr. Jerdon, writing of this species 

 (B. I. i, page 205) says that it does not ascend mountains, to any 

 height at least ; but the bird is very common at Kulhutty on the 

 Nilghiris, about 5500 feet above the sea; in fact I have taken the 



