MEROPS. 63 



Merops pMlippinns, Linn. TJie Blue- tailed Bee-eater. 



Merops philippensis, Linn., Jerd. B. 2nd. i, p. 207. 



Merops philippinus, Linn., Hume, Rough Draft N. fy E. 110. 118. 



The Blue-tailed Bee-eater breeds from March to June, pretty 

 well all over Continental India, in well cultivated and open 

 country. Like all the rest of the family, it breeds in holes in 

 banks, and lays usually four or five eggs. The holes are rarely less 

 than 4 feet deep, and 1 have known them to extend to 7 feet. 

 In diameter they vary from 2 to 21 inches. At the far extremity, 

 a rounded chamber, as a rule not less than 6 inches in diameter, 

 is hollowed out for the eggs, and at times this chamber has a thin 

 lining of grass and feathers, which I have never yet met with in 

 the nests of the other species. 



Mr. E. C. Xuiin, writing from Hoshungabad, says : " I found 

 nests of this species in the banks of the Xerbudda on the 1st 

 April. They consisted of fine grass-roots and feathers loosely 

 placed at the end of a long hole, some 2 or 3 inches in diameter 

 and perhaps 4 feet deep, which the birds had excavated in a high 

 earthen bank. A month later I found the nest of M. viridis in a 

 very similar situation." 



Colonel C. H. T. Marshall remarks : " The nests were in large 

 numbers, about 30 or 40 in the sides of mounds, that were old 

 brick-kilns in the station (Lahore). They were holes dug in the 

 earth at heights varying from 4 to 9 feet, and ran about 6 inches 

 further in than a man's arm could reach. There was no lining to 

 the egg-chamber, only a few feathers, nothing else. The eggs 

 were four in number in each nest, nearly round, clear, shining, 

 pinky-white. I found three sets of these nests. The birds lay in 

 June and the young come out in July ; the old birds were very 

 pertinacious, hovering round my head when I was digging out the 

 nests. There are large numbers of these birds all the hot weather 

 about Lahore ; they go away, apparently, in the cold weather, or 

 at most very few remain." 



Mr. F. E. Blewitt from Eaipoor writes : " The eggs were 

 secured in the high sandy banks of the Mahanuddee. The holes 

 burrowed by the birds in the somewhat loose sand of the bank 

 were from 5 to 7 feet deep, and largely rounded out at the far end 

 into a chamber the size of a large saucer. The eggs were laid on 

 the bare sand. This was in May, and all were quite fresh. Five 

 was the maximum number found in any hole. J/. viridis here, 

 at any rate, breeds a month earlier, since all the nests of this 

 latter species that I examined at the same time contained young 

 ones." 



From Kumaon Mr. E. Thompson tells us that " this, too, is a 

 common breeder in certain localities. At Nujjeebabad around and 

 about the Pethoragurh Fort numbers breed. I have seen them 

 breed in the hot valleys of the Himalayas far in the interior. But 



