34 CTPSBLir^. 



shot the birds and takeu the nests out of eaves, and Davison has 

 done the same out of buildings where they had never been dis- 

 turbed, and the nests are in all cases similar — somewhat shallow, 

 flat-bottomed, half or two-thirds saucers, composed of bro\vn moss, 

 firmly agglutinated with saliva ; only along the line of junction 

 with the place of attachment is there a thickish film of unmixed 

 inspissated saliva, and that is brownish and not white. 



The white nests are made by C. spodioinjcjia, and probably also 

 by 0. innominatci. 



The nests of this species, 0. limld, vary in size, but they average 

 about 2i inches across, stand out from 1| to 1| inch from the 

 rock or wall, and are about an inch deep. They vary from J to 

 more than | inch in thickness. 



How often they breed I cannot say ; but many of the nests which 

 I found in a cave at the little Jolly Boy, Macpherson's Straits, 

 contained fresh eggs on the 9th of March. 



The eggs are pure white and entirely devoid of gloss ; long ovals 

 very obtuse at both ends, and some of them almost cylindrical, 

 while others again have a pyriform tendency. The eggs vary 

 greatly in length, viz. from 0-6-i to 0-75 inch, but much less so in 

 breadth, i. e. only from 0-42 to 0-46 inch. The average may be 

 taken at 0-7 by 0"45 inch. 



I must note here that Captain Beavan is altogether wrong in 

 what he says (Ibis, 1867) about this species, and he must have 

 written from hearsay, for his own observations are excessively 

 accurate. He remarks that the nest of this species is considerably 

 smaller and perhaps whiter than that of '■ nidijica " (? innominata, 

 nobis), on which account it is more valued by the Burmese, \\\io 

 collect both kinds for the Chinese and Penang markets. He adds 

 that " this species is generally abundant at Port Blair, especially 

 between Aberdeen and jN"avy Bay, where every cave is full of their 

 nests." Kofl-, in the first place, the nests of this species are 

 brown and mainly composed of moss, and are not, so far as I 

 could learn, ever collected at all. In the second place, there are 

 no caves at all between Aberdeen and Navy Bay. 



Mr. Davison has watched these bu-ds making their nests ; they 

 bring a tiny piece of moss and cling on to the roof ; then for four 

 or five minutes you see the little bird's head going backwards and 

 forwards, and then ofi he flies, and you see that the piece of moss 

 has been stuck on. They do not seem to be able to stick the moss 

 on to white paint. One pair tried for nearly a week to make a 

 nest on a painted ceiling of a house, and covered the carpet below 

 with scraps of moss, but failed to get a single piece to stick : at 

 last they gave it up as a bad job. 



Later, however, they succeeded in attaching a nest to this very 

 place. The nest was the usual half-saucer, about 3 inches across 

 and 1| in depth, but composed entirely of fine rootlets just glued 

 together here and there with the ordinary gelatine, and a pretty 

 thick fihn of this occurring where the nest was joined on to the 

 ceiluig. 



