KETUTA. 97 



Mr. Brooks mentions that he " shot a female on the 25th of 

 February, sitting on two addled eggs. What little nest there was 

 consisted of sticks, and was placed on a shelf of the clay cliffs of 

 the Jumna in the Etawah District. The shelf was slightly over- 

 hung, and on it, within twenty yards of the Fish-Owl, a Neophron 

 had her nest." 



Towards the end of July, I found a pair of these Owls with two 

 fully-grown young ones in a tiny cave in the rocky and precipitous 

 banks of the Kosila, near Kakuree Ghat. The cave, the mouth of 

 which was veiled by a large down-trailing andromeda bush, had 

 obviously been their nesting-place, and though well-concealed was 

 eu> y of access. There were a few sticks covered over with castings 

 and remains of numerous birds and bones of small mammals. I 

 turned the whole family out of their quarters, but did not other- 

 wise molest them, an act of forbearance which I later had cause 

 to regret, as they ceased not, the livelong night through, to give 

 forth the most vociferous protests (from the cliff face, immediately 

 above my tent) against, as I suppose, my neglect to honour them 

 with a place in my museum. 



On January llth, 1867, I visited a large nest in a peepul-tree 

 overhanging the Jumna below Sheregurh, Zillah Etawah, in which, 

 both in 1865 and 1866, to my personal knowledge, a pair of H. 

 leucortjphus had reared their young. To my surprise, it was 

 tenanted by a pair of Ketupa ceylonensis, which had carefully 

 relined the nest, and had at that time a solitary young one in it, 

 some seven days old, a ball of whitish down. On the nest we 

 found two quails, a pigeon, doves, and a mynah, all with the 

 heads, necks, and breasts eaten away, but with the wings, back, 

 feet, and tail remaining almost intact. Two or three of them were 

 quite dry, and one, which I still have, is quite as good a specimen 

 as most of those that I owe to an eminent naturalist, who appears 

 to preserve his birds by first pulling out half the feathers and then 

 having what remains carefully run over, on very dirty ground, by a 

 heavy cart-wheel ! 



On the banks of the Sutlej and again near Bhurtpore, I found 

 nests which I had been led to as those of H. leucoryphus occupied 

 by K. ctylonensis. 



" On the 10th February," says Mr. Blewitt, writing from E-ae- 

 pore, " a single egg of this Owl was secured ; it was found on a 

 little earth in the hollow of a large inohwa-tree where two branches 

 had forked off ; the tree was growing on the ridge of a rice-field 

 near some low jungle." 



Mr. J. C. Parker writes from the neighbourhood of Calcutta : 

 " Took two fresh eggs from a nest on the top of a lofty peepul- 

 tree, 7th December. The nest appeared to have belonged to a 

 Vulture, as several of these birds' nests in adjoining trees were of 

 precisely the same construction. This was at Bagoolah, a station 

 on the E. B. Railway, some 60 miles from Calcutta. Found a 

 nearly full-grown young bird in a hole in a mango-tre3 on the 

 18th January."' 



VOL. III. 7 



