HERODIAS. 241 



bough, with barely room in most cases for one bird to stand be- 

 tween two nests, and with no room at all in some. We computed 

 that on these few trees not less than seven hundred pairs of birds 

 had nests. The three species did not appear to have quarters of 

 their own in this heronry, as I have often noticed in others, but 

 \vriv all jumbled up together indiscriminately. Year after year I 

 watched them ; they began to repair or build their nests after the 

 first good downpour of the rainy-season, that is, some time between 

 the 1st June and the 1st July ; the first eggs were laid within 

 a fortnight, and in another three weeks almost every nest had 

 its full complement of four eggs. 



The nests are precisely of the same type as those of the pre- 

 ceding species, but are smaller (on the average I should say a little 

 less than a foot in diameter and 3 inches in thickness) and are 

 composed of more slender twigs. Generally they are unlined; 

 sometimes they have a thin lining of sedge and coarse grass. 



Major C. T. Bingham remarks : " I have found the nests of 

 this bird both at Allahabad and at Delhi in July and August. They 

 sometimes breed in company, sometimes alone on a tree by 

 themselves. Nests on loose platforms of sticks with a thin lining 

 of grass on which the eggs, usually four in number, lie." 



Colonel Butler, referring to Sind, says : " Mr. Doig and I 

 found an enormous colony of this species breeding in company 

 with many other kinds of Herons, Egrets, Cormorants, &c., on the 

 24th July, 1878, in the E. Narra, Sind. 



" The nests were built in a dense tamarisk-thicket growing out 

 in the water at heights varying from 3 to 10 feet above the level 

 of the water." 



And writing from Deesa, he remarks : " I found several large 

 colonies of the smaller Egret breeding in high bulrushes in company 

 with Ardea purpurea, on the 21 st August, 1876, at Milaua, 18 miles 

 east of Deesa. The nests, like those of the Purple Heron, were 

 composed of dead sticks and built on the top of the rushes. 

 Several pairs of N.nycticorax rose out of the rushes also when my 

 men entered to take the nests, but the coolies declared that they 

 had no nests. The nests of the other two species, A. purpurca and 

 H. intermedia, were mixed indiscriminately, not built in separate 

 colonies." 



In Ceylon, according to Colonel Legge, this Egret breeds from 

 December to April, and even to May. 



The eggs of this species are typically very perfect and rather 

 broad ovals, but many eggs are perceptibly compressed or pointed 

 towards one end, and elongated and pyriform varieties occur. 



They are of course of the true Heron type already described, 

 but the shells are, I think, somewhat finer than those of either of 

 the three preceding species, and taken as a body they are of a 

 decidedly paler sea or bluish green than those of any of these 

 latter. In size they are intermediate between the eggs of //. alba 

 and H. yarzetta. 



In length they vary from 1*68 to 2'08 inch, and in breadth from 

 1-32 to 1-52 ; but the average of thirty-seven eggs is 1-9 by 1-44. 



TOL. in. 16 



