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is, up to any great elevation, but is found in the well wooded 

 districts of the low country, affecting the edges of low jungle, 

 scrubby patches of land, or detached groves and woods in the 

 vicinity of open places or fields, to which it resorts for the 

 purpose of feeding on grain and various kinds of grass seeds. 

 The " paddy "f fields, however, when the crop is ripening 

 afford it its flivourite food, and it is generally in the vicinity 

 of these that it assembles in colonies to breed. The nest is 

 suspended from either the cocoa-nut palm, the bamboo, or the 

 outspreading branches of some thinly foliaged tree growing 

 in the vicinity of the material used in its construction. 



It would be imagined that the projecting leaves of a palm 

 •would farnish the best situation for a long pendant nest like 

 that of the baya, but the tops of the fronds, to which on such 

 a tree it is always attached, do not afford so steady a hold- 

 fast for it as the twigs of an ordinary branch, and in nine cases 

 out of ten the little architect chooses a common tree in pre- 

 ference to '' cocoanuts " growing close by. As many as four or 

 five nests, however, may sometimes be counted on a palm-tree, 

 but I have frequently seen a dozen hanging from a long- 

 branched tree such as the " Nooga," Ficus laccifera, or others 

 of similar growth. Indian writers record this weaver bird as 

 building much on palms, with the singular exception of Bur- 

 mah, where it almost invariably chooses the thatch of native 

 houses, or even of a much frequented European bungalow. 



The nest in Ceylon is made of strips of cocoa pahn, date 

 palm, or bamboo leaves, and sometimes of blades of " paddy," 

 according as the material is at hand. In the Southern 

 Province, where the date palm luxuriates, I have found more 

 nests made of leaves than any other two, the fibre being very 

 strong and more durable than that of the cocoa-nut. The 

 strips of which these wonderful structures are composed, are 

 about /-^th of an inch broad, and are torn off the palm frond 

 in the most dexterous manner by the hard working little 

 *' weavers." The bird alights near the base, and with a bite 

 and twist of its bill quickly detaches one end of the desired 

 piece, launches itself out into the air, and after a momentary 

 flutter, has it torn off, and is winging its way back to the nest. 

 The neck, or part which connects the e^^ compartment with the 

 branch or leaf, as the case may be, varies from 6 inches to more 

 than a foot in length, and is in general about one inch in 

 diameter ; at the bottom it suddenly expands into the peculiar 

 flattened " goblet " or retort-shaped mass which contains the 

 nest itself, and the origin of the entrance to it. It is during 

 the formation of this part that the extraordinary ingenuity 

 and highly developed constructive powers of the male bird in 

 + Rice. 



