80 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



to him and made him go about ten yards back, so that he might 

 not feel the recoil as I had done and made him fire. He took 

 a steady aim (and he is a certain pot shot) but with no better 

 results ; the birds again did not move, on the contrary two more 

 joined them and all four peered down into what, sitting as they 

 were in the full light of the sun, must have doubtless appeared 

 darkness. I had a 48-inch single-barrelled octagon-breech eight- 

 bore muzzle-loader, (the cannon as it was commonly called) 

 loaded with six drachms of powder, and a green wire BB 2^ oz. 

 cartridge ; I took a steady aim with this, fired, heard the shot 

 distinctly rap against the bough on which the birds sat, and 

 against I believe their feathers. They jumped up and shook 

 their wings a little, but not a shot could have had strength to 

 penetrate their feathers, for even then after a moment's moving 

 about uneasily they did not fly. Those birds I calculate must 

 have been over 80 yards high, and they were not quite at the 

 top of the tree. I gave the thing up as a bad job. 



I saw or at least shot very few birds here. The Nicobar Paro- 

 quet (P. erythrogenys), the common Grackle (E. javanensis), 

 Ty tier's Tree-stare (0. Tytlerij, and the Nicobar- Collared King- 

 fisher (H. occipitalis) were all I procured. Then I joined the 

 party on Kondul, the little intervening Strait with its lovely 

 coral gardens, reminding me of parts of Macpherson's 

 Straits. 



Kondul, though inhabited, seemed to swarm with birds ; I do 

 not know whether it is because one sees them and can get at 

 them easiest on these, but we always notice that we make the 

 best bags on the smallest islands. Here, besides the birds already 

 mentioned, a pair of Sea-eagles hovering over, and the Common 

 Sandpiper trotting about on the beach, we found numbers of 

 Blyth's Cuckoordoves (M. rujipennis) , of the Nicobar Orioles 

 (0. macrourus) of the Pectoral Sun-bird (A. pectoralis), the 

 Bronze-winged Dove ( C. indicus), and of the little Indian 

 Kingfisher. Here, for the first time, I saw the beautiful Pied 

 Fruit-pigeon (C. bicolor), the white everywhere delicately 

 tinged in the fresh bird with pale maize color, feeding greedily 

 on the large fruits of a species of nutmeg (Myristica, sp.) con- 

 spicuous with their blood-red arillus, fruits that no one could 

 believe that even this large pigeon, could possibly swallow, but 

 two or three of which we took out of the crops of every bird we 

 killed. Here, too, hanging quivering like so many humming 

 birds about the white flowers of some leguminous creeper, we 

 found a lovely Scarlet Honey-sucker, which is clearly new, 

 and which I shall call JEthopyga nicobarica. 



