94 INDIAN PIGEONS AND DOVES 



The nest is the usual Pigeon's nest of twigs, more or less interlaced so 

 as to form a platform with a rough and extremely shallow depression in the 

 centre. In size the nest may be anything from eight inches to a foot across, 

 and in depth one to three inches according to the site in which it is built. _ I 

 have never seen any lining to these nests, but Colonel Bingham, writing 

 about a nest found in Thoungyeen, notes : " On the 19th March, on the road 

 from the village of Podresakai to Meplay, I found a nest of the above Pigeon 

 with the usual solitary egg, which proved to be hard set. It was easily seen 

 from below through the flimsy nest of a few sticks and straws laid across and 

 across a horizontally growing bamboo, where a smaller shoot had forked out 



from it." 



Inglis also mentions a nest consisting " of a very few sticks and a few 

 stiff grasses " ; but this admixture of grass with the twigs must be very 

 exceptional, for in some forty or fifty nests which have come under my obser- 

 vation I can remember but one such, and Bingham, describing four other 

 nests found by him, says that they were mere platforms of twigs without a 

 semblance of lining. 



The great majority of nests are built upon small saplings at a height 

 of ten to twenty-five feet from the ground, but I have taken them occasionally 

 from high, heavily-foliaged trees, such as the banyan and pepul, at a height 

 of over forty feet. Occasionally, also, they may be placed in bamboo -clumps, 

 but though two or three such nests have been reported to me, I have never 

 seen any so placed. 



The tree selected is one generally placed in fairly thick forest, but close 

 to, or on the borders of some opening, either natural, such as a river-bed or 

 open glade, or artificial, such as caused by a road or a piece of cultivated 

 ground. On the other hand they are sometimes placed on a tree well in the 

 interior of evergreen-forest and far removed from all civilization. 



I have not found it breeding over 3,500 ft., and very seldom over 

 2,500 ft., its usual breeding -grounds being from the level of the plains up to 

 some 1,500 or 2,000 ft. 



Invariably but one egg is laid, white, of course, and elliptical in shape, 

 a few specimens being met with which have one or both ends a little poiated. 

 The texture is very close and fine with a hard compact surface and sometimes 

 a slight gloss. In size they average 1.78 in. by 1.28 ( = 45.2 by 32.4 mm.), 

 and the greatest length and breadth is respectively 2.03 in. ( = 51.5 mm.) 

 by 1.48 in. ( = 37.6 mm.), and the least both ways 1.68 in. ( = 42.6 mm.) by 

 1.23 ( = 31.2 mm.). 



The four eggs in the British Museum vary in length from 1.6 in. to 1.85 

 and in breadth from 1.25 in. to 1.32, but the smallest of these must be quite 

 abnormally small. 



This is a bird of hills and plains alike, being found throughout the 

 latter wherever there is forest, in Madras, Bengal, Assam, and Burma, 

 and ascending the former up to at least 6,000 ft. It is perhaps most 

 common in the foot-hiUs of mountain-ranges and the broken grounds 

 and plains immediately adjoining them up to some 3,000 ft. in the 

 mountains themselves, though many observers do not give them credit 

 for going higher up than 1,000 or 1,500 ft. 



They are not very gregarious birds, though, of course, they coUect 

 in large numbers when attracted by the fruit of any special tree or trees. 



