TIXXUNCULUS. 197 



precipices from April to June, after which I returned to head- 

 quarters, and have never found the nests." 



-Mr. Thompson here refers to the Satpooras, the Meikle 

 Range, &c. 



Writing from Murree, Colonel C. H. T. Marshall remarks : 

 " The Kestrel usually builds in rocks, but we have found a nest 

 about 60 feet up a pine-tree, with five hard-set eggs in it, of a 

 much duller, dirtier brown than usual. This was on the 14th June. 

 The nest was apparently one originally belonging to Corvus macro- 

 rhynchns" 



Major Wardlaw-Ramsay says, writing of Afghanistan, " Breed- 

 ing in May ;'' and Lieut. H. E. Barnes informs us that he procured 

 the eggs in that country. 



Mr. Benjamin Aitken writes: "You say of the Kestrel in 

 your ' Nests and Eggs/ 'I am also informed (but do not vouch 

 for the fact) that it breeds near Mahableshwur.' 



" I beg, with all deference, to assert that the fact of the Kestrel 

 breedingat Siugurh (twelve miles south of Poona,elevation'4 162 feet) 

 is as certain as any fact of the kind could be, until you have taken 

 the eggs. I went to Singurh for one day on the 26th May, and at 

 the back of the fort, where there is a sheer descent of cliff of 

 fearful depth, a pair of Kestrels had taken up their station, and 

 were making the air ring with their screams as they pursued Kites, 

 Hawks, and Vultures that appeared in sight. They repeatedly 

 sailed just within a few yards of where I was standing, so that 

 there could be no mistake about the birds, which always returned 

 to the same spot on the face of the cliff about 50 feet below. I 

 had neither men nor ropes, but could the fact of the pair having 

 a nest have been better established by my procuring the eggs or 

 youug ones ? 



" 1 saw a pair of Kestrels about the cliffs at Khandalla, on the 

 Bhore Ghat, in June 1871, and my brother, E. H. Aitken, 

 observed a pair hanging about the same cliffs last month. I have 

 not personally the slightest doubt that Kestrels in the Deccan and 

 Konkan retire to that part of the Western Ghats and to all the 

 outlying hills every hot season ; and I hope some day to have the 

 time and enterprise to send you eggs taken within a hundred 

 miles of Bombay." 



Writing of the Deccan, Messrs. Davidson and Wenden say : 

 " Common throughout the district in the cold weather, and D. 

 thinks it breeds at Mahableshwur." 



Mr. J. Darling, Junior, informs me that he has " twice taken a 

 nest in the neighbourhood of Xeddivatam (Xilghiris), at an eleva- 

 tion of about 6500 feet first, on the 21st February, 1869 ; secon'U,^ 

 on the 1st March, 1870. The nest, for it was the same that 

 I robbed in two successive seasons, was placed in a natural hollow 

 on the top of a dead stump, about 14 feet from the ground. It 

 was circular, and composed of a few pieces of sticks, some dry 

 grasses and fibres, and was about 8 inches in diameter, and had a 

 depression about 4 inches deep, which contained four eggs, having 



