58 BOMBAY DUCKS 
Having secured the bunch, the next thing to do is to 
cut away the heads of the flowers, together with the 
upper parts of the stems, until you have a hollow cup, 
of which the base is formed of stalks closely pressed 
together, and the sides of leaves. This must now be 
lined with soft material of which the strands should 
be delicately interwoven, and then, if a few cobwebs be 
wound outside the stalks, you will have a tolerable 
imitation of a fantail flycatcher’s nest. 
The Madras Museum possesses a specimen, but this 
is not nearly so well put together as the one I am 
describing. Birds of the same species display different 
degrees of skill in the construction of their nests. Some 
are more artistic than others. The fantail flycatcher’s 
nest seems absurdly small for the bird. This has to sit 
on the nest, not zm it. 
Imagine a canary resting on an egg-cup, and you will 
have some idea of the picture presented by the sitting 
fantail. In this elegantly-shaped, shallow, cup-like 
nursery are deposited three cream-coloured eggs, spotted 
with greyish brown. They are conspicuous objects and 
may be distinguished at a distance of ten or twelve feet. 
This is one of the many awkward facts which con- 
front, at every turn, those naturalists who maintain that 
all birds’ eggs are coloured so as to render them incon- 
spicuous when in the nest. It seems to me that such 
men are slaves of a theory. So imbued are they 
with the doctrine of protective colouration that they 
are unable to see things as they are. But this is a 
digression. 
The eggs require ten or twelve days for their incuba- 
