PLATALEA. 219 



Many of the nests were blown down every year, many were 

 pulled down by the boys, as they furnished excellent dry fuel, such 

 as the lower classes here like for cooking, but where nests remained 

 intact, all the pair that re-occupied them did was to add a few 

 sticks and perhaps throw down a few of the old ones. 



By the end of December, when I next visited the village, very 

 few of the Spoonbills, Paddy-birds, and Herons, and none of the 

 Shell-Ibises, were to be seen, but the lake, already somewhat 

 shrunken, was alive with Pintail, Gadwall, Common and Summer 

 Teal, with a few Wigeon, Mallard, Red-headed and Crested 

 Pochards, and Grey Duck. A large party of the Great White 

 Crane were enjoying the cool clear water and browsing on the 

 water weeds, while a pair of Crested Grebe, of which I succeeded 

 in securing one and which are very rare in these parts, were 

 " steaming" about, like a set of monitors, with no part of their 

 hulks above water. It seems to be the rule that both Spoonbills 

 and Shell-Ibises remain only during the breeding-season at the 

 spots where they breed ; at other times they are spread far and 

 wide over the whole country. 



Major C. T. Bingham writes : " I found a few nests of this 

 bird not far from Mohar, the second station from Cawnpore on the 

 East Indian Eailway. The trees were at the edge of a little jheel 

 and the nests high upon them, constructed rather massively of 

 sticks and twigs aud almost flat. The eggs, of which there were 

 four in each nest, were quite fresh at the end of August. 



Colonel E. A. Butler remarks : " In the Eastern Narra, Sind, 

 Mr. Doig found a colony with incubated eggs, breeding on trees 

 in company with Tantalus leucoceplialus, on the llth November, but 

 the two colonies were separate." 



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

 " Common, and breeds in April and May.*' 



Colonel Legge, writing from Ceylon, says : " In the south-east 

 of Ceylon this species breeds in March. Six or eight pairs were 

 nesting at Uduwila in 1872, the nests being placed on the same 

 trees with those of the Pelican-Ibis ; they were situated low down, 

 and in some cases small branches were bent down to form a 

 foundation for the structures, which were made of tolerably large 

 sticks and were rather massive/' 



The eggs vary much in size and in shape, but they are typically 

 elongated ovals, much pointed towards one end. Excessively 

 elongated varieties are common, and some\vhat broadly oval 

 specimens occur occasionally ; but out of the numbers of eggs of 

 this species that I have seen, I have never yet met with a speci- 

 men so little pointed towards the small end as the one figured by 

 Mr. Hewitson in the 3rd edition of his ' Eggs of British Birds.' 

 The texture of the egg is somewhat coarse, slightly chalky in its 

 nature, and entirely devoid of gloss. The ground-colour is usually, 

 when the eggs are freshly laid, pure white, but occasionally faintly 

 tinged with *pink or yellow ; but, as incubation proceeds, thev 



