350 JO URNAL, BOMB A 7 NA TUBAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. X. 



This bird generally selects a dry bamboo in which to make its 

 nesting arrangements ; the hole, as a rule, is made only a few inches 

 above one of the nodes, but sometimes it is placed just below the one 

 above and next to that on which the eggs rest. The nest itself is 

 formed of a mass of tiny chips and shreds from the inside of the 

 bamboo, and, even when it uses a branch of a tree to bore its hole in, 

 there is always a foundation of soft scraps for the eggs to lie on. I 

 once found a nest of this bird in a small bamboo which had been cut 

 away at the base by some passer-by, but had caught above on the other 

 bamboos and was hanging there, swaying about in the wind. I should 

 have missed the nest myself, for, though I almost touched the bamboo 

 in passing, the bird did not fly away until I had passed, and it was 

 then noticed by a friend who was out shooting with me. 



It is a most rare thing for the nest to be made in a tree, and I have 

 only come across two or three such ; and these were all in small 

 branches, not in big ones or in main boughs. 



The full complement of eggs is four, though they sometimes lay 

 but three. They are extremely stout little eggs, of hard texture and 

 very glossy, shaped very regular ovals as a rule, sometimes slightly 

 compressed towards the smaller end, but always very blunt. They 

 vary in size between •65"X*52" and •54"X'45", the average of 

 eighteen eggs being •60"X"50"or a fraction less in breadth. They 

 breed all through April, May, and June ; but. though I took an egg 

 from the oviduct of a female as late as the 25th August, I think 

 most birds breed in April. 



This tiny woodpecker is a queer little miniature in many of its 

 ways of ClirysoGolaptes sultaneus, its piping little cry being a perfect 

 caricature of that of the bigger bird. 



It keeps principally to bamboo and reed jungle, but is sometimes 

 found very high up on lofty trees ; and I shot a pair once at Diyung- 

 mukh, which used to haunt alternately the extreme top of a very lofty 

 cotton tree and the reed jungle in which it grew. 



It is a bold little bird, and does not shun observation ; I have sat 

 beside a road and watched it hammering at a small bamboo, not twenty 

 yards from me, for some minutes. I have often noticed this bird ham- 

 mering away at perfectly sound, green bamboos, and have wondered 

 what they were working at, for though I have examined the places, 



