198 FALCONID*. 



a dirty white ground, speckled and blotclied all over with brownish 

 red." 



From. Kotagherry Miss Cockburn says : — " I have noticed that 

 a pair of these birds appropriate a certain cliff or precipice, and 

 breed there year after year. One pair have thus built on a nearly 

 perpendicular cliff, some hundred feet in height, placing their 

 nest in a small cleft about halfway up. One of the two birds 

 always keeps watch over the nest even before any eggs are laid in 

 it ; the nest is inaccessible to ordinary mortals, but last year I 

 sent for a couple of Kurumbas, and they very soon secured both 

 nest and eggs. 



" The nest was composed of straws, a very few feathers, and 

 some small pieces of dirty rags, rudely collected together. Its 

 foundation was on a rock, so it needed no other. It was taken on 

 the last day of February. It contained four eggs. Three of the 

 eggs were very much alike, having a dark reddish ground and 

 darker spots ; but one was considerably lighter, with large blotches 

 at the smaller end instead of at the larger, as is usually the case." 



Mr. Davison tells me that the pertinacity with which these 

 birds return year after year to the same nest is remarkable. At 

 Keddivatam there was a nest that had been robbed for four 

 successive years by Mr. Morgan, in which he again found the 

 Kestrels laying in the fifth year. He says, too, that though this 

 is not always the case, he thinks that after the first set of eggs 

 have been taken, this species, unlike other Falcons, often lays a 

 second time. 



Mr. A. Gr. Cardew adds the following note : — " Breeds on the 

 Nilgliiri Hills, January to March." 



Major Wardlaw-Eamsay says : — " The Kestrel is very abun- 

 dant in Karen-nee, \^here the rocky precipices afford it good 

 nesting-places. It is by no means common in the plains." 



The eggs resemble those of Falco cMcquera, but are smaller, 

 slightly broader, and less uniform in their colour. In shape they 

 are broad ovals, more or less pointed or compressed towards one 

 end. The ground-colour is a darker or lighter brick- or blood-red, 

 blotched, or mottled and freckled with a deeper shade of the same 

 colour, the blotches being in some eggs strongly defined and well 

 marked, and the whole tint of the egg being in some specimens 

 browner and yellower than I have above described. The eggs are 

 glossless, and the shell, though fine and compact, has the sort of 

 chalky texture noticed in the eggs of F. jur/i/er and F. cMcquera. 



The eggs vary from 1-46 to 1-65 inch in length, and from 1-13 to 

 1"30 inch in breadth ; the average of nineteen eggs measured beins: 

 l-57by 1-21 inch. 



