MALAY SPOTTED DOVE 213 



is found in flocks that may number as many as thirty or forty indivi- 

 duals, though this is exceptional. It is a common cage-bird with all 

 classes of natives." 



Over the whole of its range this character for shyness given it by 

 Robinson seems to hold good, and nowhere do I find any record of its 

 being the familiar viUage-bird that the Common Spotted Dove so often 

 is. At the same time in some parts of northern Burma, in the more 

 popiiloiis, cultivated areas, it is comparatively tame and confiding. 



It has the same habit of frequenting roads and village-paths in 

 search of food as has the previous bird, and, like that, when disturbed, 

 gets up with the same fluster of wing and expanded tail, and also like 

 that bird makes for the nearest tree for refuge. Both these subspecies 

 have a predilection for sitting on dead trees or on dead branches of 

 Uve ones, and may often be seen in cultivated clearings, in which the 

 few trees left standing are aU ringed and dead, perched in numbers 

 high up on their leafless boughs. 



As a rule they go about in pairs, and though sociable and fond of 

 collecting in numbers in their feeding-haimts, they are not generaUy 

 considered gregarious in the true sense of the word. 



