Birds of the Indian Hills 



is not quite ubiquitous. In most large hill 

 stations there are more houses than he is able 

 to monopolise. 



I recently spent a couple of days in one of 

 such, in a house situated some distance from 

 the bazaar, a house surrounded by trees. 



Two green-backed tits [Parus monticola) 

 were busy preparing a nursery for their pros- 

 pective ofFspring in one of the many holes 

 presented by the building in question. This 

 had once been a respectable bungalow, sur- 

 rounded by a broad verandah. But the day 

 came when it fell into the hands of a board- 

 ing-house keeper, and it shared the fate of all 

 buildings to which this happens. The verandahs 

 were enclosed and divided up by partitions, 

 to form, in the words of the advertisement, 

 " fine, large, airy rooms." There can be no 

 doubt as to their airiness, but captious persons 

 might dispute their title to the other epithets. 

 A kachcha verandah had been thrown out 

 with a galvanised iron roof and wooden sup- 

 porting pillars. The subsequently-added roof 

 did not fit properly on to that of the original 

 verandah, and there was a considerable chink 

 between the beam that supported it and the 



wall that enclosed the old verandah, so that 

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