34 A NATURALIST'S WANDERINGS 



the settlers. It chooses a strange place to set its nest in, if 

 one may so speak of its brooding place. Its solitary egg is 

 deposited on the leaf of a young cocoa-nut palm, . at the time 

 when the leaf has rotated from its vertical position to one 

 nearly at right angles to the stem. The egg is laid in the 

 narrow angular gape between two leaflets on the summit of the 

 arch of the leaf, where it rests securely, without a scrap of nest, 

 in what one would think the most unsafe position possible, yet 

 defying the heaving and twisting of the leaves in the strongest 

 winds. The leaf, as in all palms, goes on drooping further and 

 further till it falls ; and among the settlers it is a subject of 

 keen betting, when they see a Tern sitting on an ominously 

 withered leaf, whether the young bird will be hatched or not 

 before the leaf falls. The result I am told has always been in 

 favour of the bird ; if the leaf fall in the afternoon, the Tern 

 will have escaped from the egg in the morning. 



Hot infrequently the " Tjoo-Tjooit " lays its egg on a ledge 

 in the work-sheds of the island, but it never builds a nest. 

 The young one is fed incessantly by the parents with fishes, 

 which are brought in mouthfuls of generally six at a time, 

 arranged alternately head and tail. The old birds often feed 

 on the Papaya fruit, hovering on their wings all the while like 

 honeysuckers at a flower. This beautiful bird is to be found 

 only on the lone islands of the great oceans. 



Besides the little Philippine Pail (Ballus pliilippensis), a 

 resident species often employed by the colonists to hatch out 

 their domestic fowls, which they do with care, a species of Snipe 

 and a Teal visit the islands every February and March in large 

 numbers, where they find a grateful rest in that annual voyage — 

 whence and whither I could not ascertain — that the changing 

 seasons resistlessly impel them to. Jungle fowl, introduced 

 from Java, were breeding and throve well; and lastly, I ob- 

 tained some nests of the Yellow Weaver-bird (Ploeeus hypox- 

 anthus.) Strange to say, it also comes often across the sea (most 

 probably from Java) to nest on this lone island. Mr. Eoss in- 

 formed me that it builds more frequently on North Keeling ; 

 neither parents nor brood, however, take up their residence, 

 but wend their way back whence they came, leaving their 

 elegant flask-shaped nests on the branches of the trees to 

 intimate that they have come and gone. 



