392 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XI. 



where the sides are too precipitous to maintain anything but the most 

 scanty bush jungle. On one of these places a pair of Cinereus Vul- 

 tures had made their nests upon a ledge of rock, partly protected by 

 overhanging bushes, and still further by large boulders. Although 

 from a distance the place appeared to be almost inaccessible, it was 

 not so hard to get at as it seemed to be. In the first place trees grew 

 in great numbers up to within some ten yards or so of it, and it was 

 easy enough to pass from one to another of these and from where the 

 trees ceased to grow ; a light Naga boy found it equally easy, with the 

 help of numerous stout creepers, to get on the ledge where the nest 

 was. On the first occasion I visited it we found a single egg which 

 was very hard set. The parent birds made no demonstration but 

 sailed slowly round and round, now and then venturing within twenty 

 or thirty yards of our heads, and finally, in order to make absolutely 

 sure of the identity uf the eggs, 1 shot the female. 



The following year I again visited Hungrum and was much sur= 

 prised to find that the widower had remarried and again occupied the 

 same nest. I again took the solitary egg which it contained and this 

 last robbery was too much for the birds, for from that day to this, now 

 some years or more, I have not seen a vulture of this species. 



Judging from the appearance of the nest it must have been in use 

 for a very long time. Tbe mass of sticks extended fully twelve feet 

 along the ledge and occupied the whole of the breadth, which varied 

 from three to six feet. In depth it averaged fully four feet, as at the 

 edge it came up to the waist of the boy who took the egg, and it was 

 far deeper in the centre where there was a depression in the rock. 

 The Nagas of Hungrum told me that it had been built some fifteen or 

 twenty years previous to the one on which I first robbed it. 



One egg is almost white and the other only very faintly blotched 

 with dirty cream colour and brownish-red. Numerous remains of 

 small animals lay about the rocks near, and though these were but 

 bones, for the most part left from former years, the stench which arose 

 from the vicinity of the nest was almost overpowering. 



(503) Otogyps calvus. — The Black Vulture. 

 Hume, No. 2 ; Blanford, No. 1191. 



Comparatively common throughout both hills and plains portions 

 of the district. 



