216 THE AVIFAUNA OF MOUNT 



enlarged ; secondly, the birds did not appear in any numbers 

 until the beginning of September, whereas, had they been 

 going to breed, I should have thought that they would have 

 arrived at the beginning of the rains ; thirdly, closely as I 

 searched the tanks daily for about a month, although the birds 

 were plentiful all through September, I did not find another 

 nest. However, taking into consideration all the circum- 

 stances under which the nest was discovered, together with 

 the fact that these were the only small rails I observed in the 

 district where the nest was found, and they were plentiful, that 

 the man who took the nest swore that it belonged to this 

 species and pointed out the birds to me himself and finally 

 that the eggs agree exactly with the eggs of Z. pygmcea, I 

 believe now that they are genuine. 



934.— Ardetta sinensis, Gmel. 



I found two or three pairs of the Yellow Bittern at Milana, 

 18 miles south-east of Deesa, during the rains, breeding in a 

 dense bed of tall bulrushes by the side of a small tank. 

 They are not easily flushed, and when flushed they fly some- 

 what rapidly along the top of the rushes dropping into the 

 reeds again after a short flight. The following extract is taken 

 from my nesting memoranda. " On the 21st August 1876 

 at Milana I found a nest of the Yellow Bittern. It was built 

 of sedge and rushes near the outside of an immense bed of 

 tall bulrushes, in one of which it was placed about two feet 

 above the level of the water. It was a small nest and not 

 unlike that of a small rail, and contained three eggs, but un- 

 fortunately so near hatching, that I only managed to extract 

 the contents of one of them. The eggs are long and cylin- 

 drical, in fact, much in shape like night jar's eggs, about 1£ 

 inch in length and white, faintly tinted with pale skim milk 

 blue." I think, there can be no doubt of the identity of the 

 eggs as there were two pairs of the birds in the clump of 

 rushes in which I found the nest, a single bird rose close to 

 the nest and there was no other bird to be found anywhere 

 near the tank, that the eggs could possibly have belonged to. 

 On the 24th instant I found another nest exactly similar in 

 every respect, but built in a clump of bulrushes growing 

 quite on the outside of the bed. The bird rose off the nest 

 within a yai'd of me, but there were no eggs, and when I re- 

 turned a few days later the nest was deserted. I only saw 

 about three pairs of the birds altogether, one of which I shot 

 (c? and ?), and a fortnight later when I visited the ground 

 they had all disappeared, so that probably they only remain 

 here during the rains. 



