44 THE NIGHTJARS, BEE-EATERS & KINGFISHERS. 



branded from the days of Pliny. The Goatsuckers, or 

 Nightjars, belong, of course, to the Tribe Fissirostres. 

 There are half-a-dozen species of them in India, of 

 which one occurs in Bombay. I have only caught 

 occasional glimpses of it, but it can be no other than 

 Caprimulgus asiaticus, the Common Indian Nightjar. 

 Its voice is a strange sound and has been compared 

 to a small stone skimming along on ice. All the 

 members of this family lay their eggs, only two, on 

 the bare ground, in the hot season. They are of a 

 pale salmon, or stone colour, patched and blurred 

 with purplish brown. 



The next family of the Fissirostres contains the Bee- 

 eaters. Everybody knows the little grass-green bird, 

 with a long bill and two long, thin feathers, outgrow- 

 ing the rest of its tail by a couple of inches, which sits 

 on a twig, or telegraph wire, and darts after passing 

 flies ; but I have met many who did not know what to 

 call it. It is the Common Indian Bee-eater ( ' Merops 

 viridis). In Bombay it is to be seen everywhere from 

 the end of the rains till the beginning of the hot 

 season, but disappears in the interval. Yet it is not 

 ranked as a migratory bird, and it is not so in the 

 usual sense. It only leaves us during the breeding 

 season, because it cannot find comfortable family 

 quarters in our island. It makes its nest in a burrow, 

 as long as a man's arm, which it digs for itself. Its 

 only pickaxe is its own slender beak, so it seeks some 

 river bank, or similar situation, where the soil is 

 soft. At such a place hundreds of them will congre- 

 gate and bring up their young in company. That busi- 

 ness over, they disperse again and pursue their useful 

 mission of keeping down the flies ; for though they 



