96 A BIRD CALENDAR 



of a grey hornbill's nest he discovered at 

 Lahore in 1910. About the middle of April 

 he noticed a pair of paroquets nesting in a hole 

 in a tree. On April 28th he saw a hornbill 

 inspecting the hole, regardless of the noisy 

 protests of the paroquets. On the 3Oth he 

 observed that the hole had become smaller, 

 and suspected that the hornbills had taken 

 possession. On May 1st all that was left of the 

 hole was a slit. On May 6th Mr. Currie 

 watched the cock hornbill feeding the hen. 

 First the male bird came carrying a fig in his 

 bill. Seeing human beings near the nest, he 

 did not give the fig to the hen but swallowed it 

 and flew off. Presently the cock reappeared 

 with a fig which he put into the slit in the 

 plastering ; after he had parted with the fig he 

 began to feed the hen by bringing up food from 

 his crop. During the process the beak of the 

 hen did not appear at the slit. 



On May yth Mr. Currie opened out the 

 nest. The hole was sixteen feet from the 

 ground and the orifice had a diameter of three 

 inches; all of this except a slit, broadest at 

 the lower part, was filled up by plaster. This 

 plaster was odourless and contained embedded 

 in it a number of fig seeds. 



