138 INDIAN PIGEONS AND DOVES 



some birds breeding in was a collection of deep borrow -pits beside the main 

 road leading into the town of Krishnagar, and this was the more strange in 

 that there was an abundance of masonry buildings of all kinds, old and new, 

 within a very few hundred yards of where they were nesting. 



They breed in colonies, often very large ones, and I know of no instance 

 of single nests being found. The nest itself is the usual untidy platform 

 of dry twigs, but much mixed with a good deal of rubbish, such as straw from 

 cattle-bedding, grass, and the accumulation of feathers from countless 

 generations of birds. They make use of the same nest for several broods, 

 and I think, almost certainly, for many consecutive years, so that as might 

 be expected, they get into a filthy state, and are full of vermin. 



Many years ago, when I was stationed in Nadia, some two hundred 

 pairs of these Pigeons bred in the roof of a very old police-station in that 

 district. This roof consisted of an upper stone-slab one, and a lower false 

 one of bricks with a gap between the two of some four feet, in which the birds 

 placed their nests, finding entry by the holes left for ventilation. As this 

 was a part of India where the birds were not held sacred, I forced an entry 

 into the roof and inspected the nests, the owners of which had left in a panic- 

 stricken crowd prior to the commencement of my housebreaking operations. 

 There must have been from fifty to sixty nests in this place, some in groups 

 of five or six all huddled together, others a few feet apart from any other, 

 but all aUke were in a filthy condition, and the material looked as if it must 

 have been collected there by many generations previously, each generation 

 merely adding its quota of feathers and insects and a little dirty straw 

 collected from a cattle-byre a few yards away. 



In spite of the close proximity of their nests to one another, in none 

 did I find more than two eggs or squabs, nor have I personally ever seen 

 more than two such, but Fergusson, Inghs, and others have taken three 

 eggs from the same nest, so it may be that this Pigeon does occasionally 

 lay three eggs, or, and this is more likely, two birds may lay their eggs 

 in the same nest. 



As far as I can ascertain, there is as yet no recorded instance of this 

 Pigeon ever making its nest on a tree : invariably they place the nest in a 

 hole of some kind in masonry, or cave or crevice in a cUff, in a hole in an 

 earthen wall or bank, or in some underground tunnel or cutting, but never 

 have they, previous to this, been known to make their nest in a tree. The 

 finding, therefore, of two such nests is a most interesting fact. 



Captain C. R. S. Pitman, the finder of these two nests, \mtes to me 

 about them, in epistola, as follows : " On 16th July, 1913, I found this 

 Pigeon still breeding amongst the precipitous clifis and craggs of the Girni 

 Sar (5,880 ft.), a ridge of hills in independent territory across the administrative 

 border to the north of the Derajat District. I found a lot of egg shells lying 

 about in the nuUahs below the chffs where the ' Blue Rocks ' swarmed and 

 on one occasion I saw a Pigeon fly into the chfp and a few minutes afterwards 

 she came out again and threw down the egg shells from which her nestlings 

 had apparently just hatched out. I also found two nests placed in wild-fig 

 trees in a nullah full of rushes and grass. 



" Both nests were quite massive constructions of sticks and twigs lined 

 with finer material and dead grass. One was placed among the thin top 

 branches about 18 ft. from the ground and contained two smooth white 

 glossy eggs on the point of hatching. The other was placed in a stout branch 

 12 ft. from the ground and contained two young ones about ten days old ; 

 these latter had seeds and small bits of grain in their crops ! ! " 



