176 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIV 



by no means come amiss and keep the men in food till a few un- 

 fortunate muskdeer also fall victims. I have taken the greatest delight, 

 on several occasions, in cutting every noose and have gone up and down 

 the spurs from end to end especially for the purpose, thereby demolishing 

 in one day what has taken two to four men a couple of weeks hard work 

 to put up. I am glad to add we are pretty free of snaring in this district now. 

 Well to come to the point : the birds found hanging in the nooses, each 

 morning are carried off in triumph and plucked, in some cases, near the first 

 stream the men come to or carried off to their camp , usually some well con- 

 cealed cave or a large and thickly foliaged tree. Since these men change 

 their camp every three or four days for fear of attracting attention, by stay- 

 ing in one place where their fires might be noticed, it stands to reason, the 

 heaps of feathers of monaul and tragopan are pretty considerable and would 

 strike a casual observer in each case as the work of a hawk, but a short 

 search somewhere in the vicinity will bring to view bits of charred wood 

 and ashes and some leaves and grass well flattened out which the men have 

 used as beds. These signs together with those of a spur that has been 

 noosed though it may be a couple of miles away, tell their own tale. The 

 feathers would naturally be plucked a few yards away from where the cook- 

 ing takes place, if not as I mentioned above at the first stream the man comes 

 to and thus easily accounting for the absence of bones among the feathers, 



C. H, DONALD. 

 Bhadarwa, Kashmir State, 11th July, 1901, 



No. XXV.— NESTING OF THE COOT {FULICA ATRA) AT POONA. 



Dates in editing " Hume's Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds" states "' The Coot 

 breeds throughout India in large jheels and lakes that contain water 

 all the year round." Further on he only mentions two recorded instances of 

 e<^gs of this bird having been taken outside Cashmere, vis., Lieut, Burgess 

 at Ahmednagar m 1849 and Col. Butler near Belgaum in 1879. Person- 

 ally though I have searched water in various parts of this Presidency on 

 many occasions, until this year, I have never found this bird breeding. 

 Pieces of water where these birds abound in the cold weather usually con- 

 tain a few birds, which I have always taken to be those who have been 

 wounded or otherwise crippled so that they were unable to migrate and did 

 not breed. It may therefore interest ornithologists to hear that this year 

 they are breeding fairly commonly round Poena. I visited a jheel on the 

 14th July with a view to seeing what water birds I could pick up and was 

 wadinw very nearly waist deep in water, in which reeds were growing freely, 

 when I saw a floating mass of rushes. I sent a coolie out to see whether 

 it was a nest or not : he reported that it was and contained 6 eggs. On 

 inspection I fonnd it was a Coot's {Fulica atra) nest and saw the hen swim- 

 ming away in the offing. The nest was a very solid structure, the foundations 



