ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTES FROM COCOAWATTE ESTATE. 289 



found nest with three young on April 23rd. I have heard of five eggs in 

 a clutch, 



19. Loricidus indicus, Gmeh, the Ceylon Lorikeet. — Very common ; 

 breeds here from March to June, during which months I took a few 

 clutches of eggs this year. The bird generally makes use of some 

 small natural cavity in a tree, inside which, if the wood is soft, 

 it usually excavates a downward passage from 2 to 4 feet in depth. In 

 all the nests I examined the eggs were laid on a pad about an inch 

 thick, composed of fresh green leaves and halves of leaves torn ofFlength- 



' wise along the midrib. The eggs are two to three in number, broad dull 

 white ovals, but they soon become marked with faint greenish stains 

 from the juices of the leaves on which they are deposited. Two eggs 

 measure |^" X f " and f " X |". 1 was struck with the rapidity with 

 which the Love-birds passed up and out of their nest passages when 

 alarmed on their eggs. In one case the bird always darted out 

 simultaneously with my tapping the tree with a stick, exactly as if it 

 had been sitting just inside the entrance when disturbed ; and yet her 

 eggs were four feet below it down a tunnel about 3 inches in diameterj 

 up which she had to pass to effect her escape. In all cases the trees 

 chosen were rather small ones standing in the open. The nest- holes 

 were 5 to 15 feet from the ground. 



20. Picus mahrattensis^ Lath., the Yellow-fronted Woodpecker. — ■ 

 Not uncommon at 1,000 feet. 



21. Yungipicus gymnophthalmus^ Blyth, the Pigmy Wood- 

 pecker. — Fairly common up to 3,500 feet. Always works the branches 

 of trees instead of the trunks like its larger allies. 



22. Chrysocolaptes strickJandi, Layard, Layard's Woodpecker. — 

 Fairly common from 2,000 feet upwards. I have the following note on its 

 uidification : — Found a neat on January 12th, 1895. Bird flew ont 

 as I passed the hole, so close that I could see the whitish bill which 

 distingmshes it from the commoner B. ceylonus. The hole was about 

 3 inches in diameter and 25 feet from the ground, drilled through the 

 hard outer shell of the tree into the softer core, when it descended for 

 about a foot to the egg chamber, which contained one single partially 

 incubated egg lying on the rotten wood. Mr. C. B. Murdoch, who was 

 with me, did the climbing, and did it right well, having to hang on 

 for a long time while he cut out the hole with a pocket knife. The 

 tree would have been beyond me. 



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