MALAY SPOTTED DOVE 211 



5.70 in. ( == 144.8 mm.), as against an average of 5.55 in. ( = 141 mm ) in 

 the largest local form of the Indian bird. 



The bill is also slightly larger, being .65 in. ( = 16.5 mm.) from the front 

 agamst .55 m. ( = 14 mm.) in the Indian Spotted Dove, and about .9 in 

 ( = 22.8 mm.) from the gape. 



Colours of soft parts. Iris reddish-brown, or bright hazel with a reddish 

 outer-nng ; bill dark horny or slaty-brown, sometimes nearly black ; edges 

 of eyelid and narrow bare orbital-skin reddish-lake ; legs and feet dull red 

 reddish-purple, or deep coral-red. 



The Sumbawa birds are said to have the irides pale bright yellow 

 (Guillem, P.Z.S. 1885, p. 510) and the birds from Menado and Talisse islands 

 brown ones (Buttik., Notes Leyd. Mus., IX p. 76). 



Female. Similar to the male. 



Measurements. A trifle smaller than the male with an average wing- 

 measurement of about 5.55 in. ( = 141 mm.) and the other measurements in 

 proportion. 



Young differ from the adult in the same way as the young of the Indian 

 Spotted Dove differ from the adult of that subspecies ; but, Judging from 

 the few young specimens in the British Museum Collection, the young of 

 the Burmese bird are far more rufous in their upper-plumage than are the 

 young of the Indian one. 



Nestling. At first a naked black-skinned object, with sparse yellow-buff 

 down here and there, gradually becoming thicker as the bird grows older. 



Distribution. From Chittagong, Looshai Hills, Manipur, and North 

 Cachar, through Burma, Yun-nan, Siam, Cochin-China, the whole of the 

 Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra as far south as Timor and the Moluccas, where 

 Salvador! considers it a winter-visitor only. 



The birds from Chittagong, the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and the Looshai 

 Hills are all tjrpical tigrina, but as I have already shown, the birds from 

 Manipur are intermediate though the majority are nearer the Burmese than the 

 Indian form, whilst those from the North Cachar Hills are either typical 

 Burmese birds or very nearly so. 



The birds from the Sunda Islands and especially from Java, Lombock, 

 and Timor, are said to be somewhat larger, with a wing averaging 5.9 in. 

 ( = 150 mm.), but with the large amount of material available for examination 

 in the British Museum I cannot differentiate between the birds of these islands 

 and further north. 



Nidification. All writers agree that this bird breeds practically all 

 the year round. Macdonald, Major H. R. Baker, Gates, and Harington say 

 that this is the case, and no one seems to have selected any special months 

 as the ones in which most eggs may be taken. 



Gates, writing from Upper Pegu, remarks that this Dove "is common 

 everywhere except on the hills, where I did not meet with it. It seems to 

 breed all the year round." Again, writing from Wau in Lower Pegu, he adds : 

 " The nest of this bird is to be found all the year through." 



The nest is like that of the Indian Spotted Dove, a very flimsy concern 

 made of fine twigs and coarse grasses, with occasionally a few roots and weed- 

 stems added to the others. These are all interlaced to form a rough and 

 very transparent platform 5 or 6 in. in diameter, which is placed in any 

 shrub, bush, sapling, clump of bamboos or cane-brake a few feet from the 

 ground, never over some 20 ft. or so, generally lower and sometimes as low 



P2 



