2678 The Zoologist — July, 1871. 



I happened to be diiviug under a seeso tree at Nynpoory a few days ago, iu 

 the most public part of the station, when I saw a neophron sitting on her 

 nest, certainly not more than sixteen feet off the ground ; the bird on seeing 

 me merely raised herself and looked at me : the nest contained a pair of 

 eggs of rather a common type — a dirty pinkish ground, minutely speckled 

 all over with red : one of the eggs measured nearly half an inch larger than 

 the other, and was so highly incubated as to prevent my blowing it ; the 

 other I managed to blow, and think it must have been laid fully ten 

 days later. Our Indian neophron [i. e. supposing it to be distinct from 

 Percnopterus) breeds generally on trees in the vicinity of towns and villages : 

 as the nests I now know of are built on the tamarind, mango, peepul and 

 burgut, they seem to have no particular fancy for any kind of tree, as some 

 of our Indian birds have. One pair have actually built their nest close to 

 my house, and they have been carrying rags now for the last week to line 

 their nest with, and although the female sits daily for several hours there is 

 no egg yet. The " koel" (E. oricntalis) and " popiya " (H. variiis) are now 

 a dreadful nuisance; the former begin their notes at two in the morning, 

 and should one happen to take up its abode in your compound sleep in the 

 morning is quite out of the question. The koel deposits her eggs almost 

 exclusively in the nest of Corvus splendens, and I have frequently had 

 three young cuckoos (koel) and one young crow brought to me out of the 

 same nest : there is no doubt that the nest of C. culminatus is also some- 

 times used, but I should say rarely. It is strange that the latter crow 

 should build, as a rule, two to four months earhcr than C. splendens. 

 While almost all our insessorial birds begin to build with the first fall of rain 

 in June, C. culminatus generally lays in February and March, sometimes 

 in April and early in May. There is, however, no accounting for eccen- 

 tricities in the habits of some birds. The well-known Sarus crane {Grus 

 Antiijonc) generally builds in August and September, when the country is 

 partially under water : I have seen birds sitting in October, though that 

 may be considered very exceptional. Imagine my sui-prise when I found a 

 Sarus sitting on her nest on the 2Gth of Februaiy last ! I was marching 

 along the old bed of the Ganges (Boor-Ganga), in the Ela district, on a 

 collecting excursion, and I had just secured a fine specimen of Haliseetus 

 leucoryphus, which was on the look out for ducks on the swamp, when up 

 got the crane and walked leisurely away, showing a pair of snow-white eggs, 

 about the same size as those of G. cinerea. The nest was a large platform 

 of sticks and dry grass raised a little above the surface of the water, and 

 quite an island. The piece of water was not twenty yards broad, but I had 

 to get a boy to swim to the nest. Judging from the time of the year, and 

 from the eggs being quite spotless, I conclude that they were the first eggs 

 laid by that pair, and that they were birds that had been hatched too late 

 the year before to lay eggs at the usual season. — A. Anderson; Futtehgiirh, 

 N.W. Provinces, India, May 6, 1871. 



