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The bed of the stream has been brought up level with the top of the dam by rough masonry, so 

 that in the rains there is probably a tolerable waterfall here. Inside the masonry of the dam, 

 opening with pillar-supported arches (in front of which the falling water would hang like a 

 curtain), a vaulted chamber has been wrought. In the course of ages innumerable cracks have 

 opened in the roof, the whole interior surface of which, dripping from the percolation of the 

 water running overhead, is tapestried with luxuriant tresses of maidenhair. Eight and left the 

 rocks rise precipitously ; and here and there water dribbles sluggishly in long green mossy streaks 

 down their grey faces. Here it is that at the present time (November) our little Buntings, after 

 a hearty breakfast on grass-seeds, come between 8 and 10 a.m. to drink. A few days ago I sat in 

 one of the archways of the vaulted chamber for a couple of hours watching them, seeing at least 

 a hundred pairs, and shooting some dozen or so. The birds always come in pairs (this is the 

 breeding-season), chasing each other, not with long flights, but flitting from Euphorbia to 

 Euphorbia, or point to point of rock, until near one of these drinking-places, when, perching on 

 the rock-face, where some tiny ledge affords a comfortable footing, they drink for a moment 

 greedily, then pause to squat where they stand and enjoy the warm sunshine, drink again, 

 zealously pick out minute grains of quartz (which always abound in their stomachs), then sit and 

 sun themselves again, and so on. Presently one will fly up, making a pretence of swooping at 

 the other ; and then off they go, skirmishing up the hill-side, one after the other, like a couple 

 of kittens. The natives here call them ' Andhi Cherya,' which might be translated ' the blind 

 birds,' a by no means inappropriate name, as they will often sit motionless until one's foot is 

 almost on them. The people, however, interpret it as signifying ' the bird to which men are 

 blind ; ' and there is no doubt that their plumage harmonizes so well with the grey stones inter- 

 spersed with reddish-yellow stunted grass, that even at short distances they are practically invisible 

 so long as they remain, as they often will for ten minutes at a time, perfectly still. 



" The breeding-season appears to be November : the natives say that they also lay early in 

 July, at the commencement of the rains ; but as to this I can say nothing. The very first birds 

 that I shot, on November the 2nd, the day after I arrived here, proved on dissection to be 

 breeding; and out of the oviduct of a female shot on the 3rd, I took a nearly perfect though 

 colourless egg. For several days we hunted without success, finding many nests that I believed 

 to belong to this species, and seeing everywhere females about, straws in mouth, but meeting 

 with no eggs. At last, on the 12th of November, I myself accidentally stumbled upon two nests. 

 I was walking slowly, and, if it must be confessed, footsore and somewhat despondent, amid the 

 loose blocks and rocky shingles of the southern flanks of the Taragurh Hill, when a female sud- 

 denly sprang up and darted off from within two inches of my foot. I looked down ; and there, 

 on the sloping hill-side, half overhung by a moderate-sized block of greyish quartz, was a little 

 nest, from which the bird had risen, and on which I had been within an ace of stepping. Close 

 at hand were two or three small tufts of yellow withered grass ; but these were several inches 

 distant from the nest. This latter (which, laid on the hill-side, was some three or four inches 

 thick on the valley side, and barely three quarters of an inch towards the hill) was composed at 

 the base, and everywhere externally, of small thorny acacia-twigs and very coarse roots of grass. 

 This, however, was a mere foundation and casing, on and in which the true nest was constructed 

 of fine grass-stems, somewhat loosely put together, the bottom being lined with soft white 



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