274 PHALACROCORACID^E. 



quite happy in the water, and although some of the birds were 

 certainly not more than a week old they dived readily on rny 

 attempting to seize them. 



" The nest is made of twigs, and is similar to but smaller than 

 that of P. fuscicollis. My eggs were taken on the 26th July and 

 24th August, but it must commence breeding some weeks before the 

 former date." 



The eggs are of the true Cormorant type long oval eggs, more 

 or less pointed towards one end, with an exterior chalky coating, 

 which, white or bluish white when first laid, becomes, as incubation 

 proceeds, yellowish or yellowish brown, and beneath this a 

 firm, hard, greenish-blue shell. As a rule, more or less of the 

 chalky covering becomes detached in the nest, and it is not rare to 

 find eggs which have naturally lost this coating from more than 

 half their surface. 



In length the eggs vary from 1*65 to 1*92, and in breadth from. 

 1-08 to 1*25 ; but the average of forty-seven eggs is 1/76 by 1/16. 



Plotus melanogaster (Pemi.). The Indian SnaJce-bird. 



Plotus melanogaster (Gm.) } Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p, 865 j Hume, Rouyli 

 Draft N. $ E. no. 1008. 



The Indian Snake-bird or Darter seems to breed generally 

 throughout India, the season varying in different provinces accord- 

 ing to the monsoon. 



In Ceylon and the country south of Madras, where they get the 

 north-eastern monsoon, they lay in January or February, while in 

 Upper India, where we get the south-western monsoon, the 

 majority breed in August, though a few lay as early as the end of 

 June, and I have found several nests in July. They build moderate- 

 sized stick-nests on trees, three or four pairs building on the same 

 tree, and not unfrequently twenty pairs in the same clump of trees. 

 Like the Little Cormorant, in whose company they so often nest, 

 they seem to have a decided preference for thorny acacias, like the 

 babool, to build on. 



They seem to occupy the same trees year after year, occasion- 

 ally building a new nest, but as a rule only repairing the old 

 ones. 



I have seen many of their breeding-haunts, and in every case but 

 one they were small clumps of babool trees, which at the nesting- 

 season stood well out into the water, in some cases half a mile, 

 altough in the dry season merely standing at the edge of some lake, 

 swamp, or pond. 



Three or four is, I think, the full complement of eggs. I have 

 on several occasions found four in a nest, but never more. 



Colonel Butler writes : " I found a colony of Snake-birds 

 breeding this year (1876) in a tank about 18 miles from Deesa on 

 the 21st August. The nests were large, composed of dead sticks, 

 and closely packed on two low trees (about 15 feet high) growing 



