284 JO URNAL, BOMBA Y NA TUBAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol X 



ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM THE COCOAWATTE 



ESTATE, LUNUGALA, IN THE PROVINCE OF 



UVA, CEYLON 



By a. L. Butlee. 



(Read before tJie Bomhay Natural History Society on lith Jan.^ 1896.) 



I venture to hope that the following paper, embodying my observa- 

 tions on ornithology during a year in a district of the province of 

 Uva, Ceylon, may not be altogether without interest to Naturalists. 



I have given rather lengthy notes on the breeding of species whose 

 nidification is not described in the second edition of " Nests and Eggs 

 of Indian Birds," such as the Ceylonese hornbill and Layard's wood- 

 pecker, and on other such interesting birds as the crested tree swift, 

 the Malabar trogon, the frog-mouth, etc ; but I hope my observations 

 will possess sufficient interest to atone to some extent for their length. 

 If one does not depart occasionally from the " very common, breeds, 

 eggs white" style of note, it is almost impossible to make a 

 paper readable. Subsequent workers in Ceylon are immensely 

 indebted to Colonel Legge for his charming book on the birds of the 

 island, which miikes the study of its avifauna very easy for them ; 

 and the completeness of Colonel Legge's work is such that in the 

 fifteen years since his book was published, only three species have been 

 added to his list — Asio accipitrinus, Pallas, a hen-bird from Jaffna, 

 Nov. 1891 ; Coturnix coromandelica, Gmelin, obtained at Colombo in 

 1883 ; and Alcedo heavani, Wald., procured by Mr. A. P. Green near 

 Dambool in 1892, and subsequently obtained by him in other localities 

 and by myself in this district as noticed in these notes. 



The centre from which I write is the Cocoawatte Estate, four miles 

 from Lunugala, in the Uva Province. I have confined my notes to 

 the birds observed and positively identified within a radius of ten miles 

 from the estate, excluding the species I have met with a little further 

 off, and even as it is the total number noticed, 161 species, is a large 

 one, and shows the locality to be very rich in bird-life. The piece of 

 country dealt with slopes down from the district of Madulsima (4,500ft.) 

 to Lunugala (about 2,500 ft.), and then over two low ranges of hills to 

 the village of Madigama (1,000 ft.), the lowest point alluded to in this 

 paper. 



