652 



THE BIRDS OF NORTH KANAKA. 



By J. Davidson, i.c.s. 



(Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on Feb. 2Sth, 1898.) 



I was first appointed to Kanara in December, 1888, and I remained 

 there till May, 1890. During that time I had charge of the Southern 

 portion of the district, and except during the five months of the rains 

 which I spent at the Head-Quarters, Karwar, I was during this period 

 touring about in the four Southern talukas. 



I again returned to Kanara in January, 1893, and remained there till 

 the conclusion of my Indian service on March 31st, 1896. During this 

 later period I travelled pretty well everywhere throughout the district, 

 and devoted almost all my spare time to studying its birds and insects. 

 I have therefore seen a good deal of the feathered denizens of the most 

 beautiful part of the Bombay Presidency, and now that I have left Kan- 

 ara probably for ever, I gladly take advantage of Mr. Phipson's hind 

 offer to put on record my notes on its birds. They are of course incom- 

 plete, as in these dense forests passing strangers must constantly occur 

 and are very likely to be overlooked, and my duties being almost en- 

 tirely inland, I never had an opportunity of properly studying the sea- 

 birds on the coast. With regard to these latter, the information I have 

 obtained is very meagre. 



Kanara, the most Southern district of the Bombay Presidency, is 

 situated on the coast, immediately south of the Portuguese territory of 

 Goa, and extends to the South along the coast till it reaches the Madras 

 Presidenc} r at Kundapur, a distance of about eighty miles. In the 

 extreme South it is a narrow strip of some fifteen miles, but in the 

 centre and North, say from Kumta to the east of Sirsi, or from Karwar 

 to Mundgode, it is about sixty to seventy miles broad. 



It is naturally divided by the line of Ghats into the coast and above- 

 Ghat talukas. The coast portion consists of five divisions, Karwar, 

 Ankola, Kumta, Honawar, and Bhutkul. This contains valleys along 

 the four main rivers occupied by rice fields and cocoa-nut gardens. 

 These also form a belt along the coast extending in Bhutkul nearly to 

 the hills, but elsewhere comprising a good deal of broken hilly ground, 

 largely clothed with evergreens and containing small patches of rice 

 and spice gardens ; the evergreen forests in Karwar come down to the 



