220 TANTALIDJi;. 



become much sullied and soiled. Spotless eggs occur, but niuety- 

 niae out of every hundred eggs are more or less marked. The 

 markings vary much in extent and character, but they are often 

 almost exclusively confined to the larger end, and they are always 

 largest and most numerous there. The markings consist of more 

 or less smudgy and ill-defined blotches and spots, with here and 

 there a hazy spot, streak, or cloud intermingled. In colour and in 

 intensity they differ much ; in some eggs they are a clear bright 

 brown, reddish brown, and even almost black, and in others they 

 are feeble, dingy, yellowish brown or pale sepia, as if half-washed 

 out. Occasionally both class of markings are found on the same 

 egg, but this is the exception. 



In length the eggs vary from 2-4 to 2-95, and in breadth from 

 1-65 to 1-95 ; but the average of twenty-nine eggs is 2-7 by I'Sl. 



Family TANTALID^. 



Tantalus leucocephalus, Forst. The Pelican-Ibis. 



Tantalus leucocephalus, Gm., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 761 ; Hume, Rouyh 

 Draft N. Sr E. no. 938. 



The Pelican-Ibis is widely distributed throughout the Indian 

 Empire. 



It breeds, immediately at the close of the monsoon, in October 

 in Upper India, in February in parts of Southern India. 



Though by no means a rare bird, its breeding-places are not, in 

 Upper India at any rate, very numerous, and I myself only know 

 of one. I will quote the notes I made when I visited it on two 

 occasions : — 



" January 24<7j, Oohlmrdhum, Zillah Muttra. — We found here a 

 breeding-place, the first I have yet seen of the Pelican-Ibis. There 

 weve perhaps seventy nests on four trees, — three tamarinds and one 

 peepul, — in the immediate neighbourhood of this village. The nests 

 were loose ragged platforms, composed of thin sticks and twigs, 

 and small for the size of the bird. At the time we visited them 

 one or two full-grown dingy-coloured young were standing on each 

 nest . They were able to fly, for every now and then a young one 

 would rise from the nest and take a short wheeling flight, but they 

 still had to be fed by the parents, one of which from time to time 

 arri\ed to feed them. Whenever an old bird approached within 

 thirty or forty yards of the tree, one could easily guess which its 

 nest w as by the state of excitement into which the young of that 

 nest immediately got. As soon as the old bird alighted on the 

 nest, the young, which up to that moment had been standing bolt 

 upright at the full stretch of their long legs, squatted down open- 

 mouthed in front of it to be fed, which the old one accomplished 

 by apparently thrut.ting its large bill half-down the young one's 

 throat. 



