454 OCCASIONAL NOTES FROM SIKKIM. — NO, II. 



tliey can be. Ifc is devoutly to be hoped that this alarmingly 

 suggestive custom will be restricted to the Quail kingdom.* 



On the 8th March of this year (1880), I found a nest of 

 Pomatorhinns erytlirogenys with three hard-set eggs. These 

 are the earliest of the smaller bird's eggs I have got since 1875, 

 and show that, in some respects at least, the season is in 

 advance of average seasons. Probably the extra moisture we 

 have had this year has had more to do with the earlier breeding 

 than any difference in the temperature. Moisture would cause 

 grubs and other similar creatures, which are the principal 

 food of the Ground Thrushes, to hatch out, and abun- 

 dance of the proper sort of food is the main incitement 

 to lay. A very good guess can usually be made at the 

 favorite food of birds on examining the kind of jungle 

 they nest in. Food is, undoubtedly, the great determiner of 

 the breeding season and place, much more so than temperature 

 is. I can see no good reason, except the greater abundance 

 of food, in the way of grubs and caterpillars, why, in 

 tropical countries, spring should be chosen by the majority 

 of birds for breeding in preference to the other seasons. 

 Our latest breeding bird is, perhaps, Munia acuticauda, and 

 the reason of the lateness of it appears to be that it waits 

 the ripening of the rice, which is its favorite food, before 

 venturing to raise a family. Probably if birds got abundance 

 of forcing food all the year round, as domestic fowls get, 

 they would behave in the same manner and lay more frequently. 

 It has become the established practice with so many of 

 them to lay only in spring that it might take a few 

 generations to break them out of their forefathers' routine, 

 but that such can be done the domestic fowl is a livingp roof. 



Judging from the lively notes of several of the birds, 

 they are breeding this moist year by the middle of March 

 instead of vraiting till April as in drier years. One of the 

 first to call, after the Ground Thrushes, has been Volvocivora 

 melaschistos, whose monotonous note is unmistakable. It is 

 a whistling whee-whee-wheeah, rather slowly uttered ; all the 

 notes being well drawn cut, and the last markedly so. I heard 

 it first on the 8th March. This bird is a permanent resident 

 of these hills ; abundant up to 4,000 feet, and occasionally 

 found at considerably higher elevations, but is rarely heard 

 during the cold season, and, consequently, but seldom, observed 

 then as its habit is to frequent densely-foliaged trees. Since 



* You must not forget that in the Basque Provinces when the wife has been 

 confined, she gets up and goes about her household affairs, but the husband goes to 

 bed for a week and receives the congratulations of his neighbours — Ed, 



