233 
Birds of Kohat and Kurram. 
of them becomes quite appreciable and rather offensive. 
Gardens, hedges, and trees are disgustingly soiled by the 
rain of their excreta. Shooting the birds is encouraged in. 
Cantonments at this time, and every sepoy who can procure 
a gun slaughters to his hearths content. But not with¬ 
standing these drastic measures little mitigation of the 
nuisance is effected/’ 
The spring migration sets in about the second week in 
March and continues till the middle of May, the return 
passage commencing early in August and continuing till 
October, hut comparatively few examples are seen in autumn. 
A few stay for the winter, being fairly common then in the 
reed-beds and scrub round Lachi. None appear to breed in 
the Kurram Valley, but a large number pass through. 
An example picked up by Major Magrath near Peiwar 
(6500 feet) had evidently been strangled by getting its head 
inextricably fixed between the primaries when preening 
itself. 
[779.] Passer montanus. The Tree-Sparrow. 
Rattray, J. B. N. H. S. xii. p. 340 (nests freely: Upper 
Kurram) ; Marshall, op. cit. xiv. p. 604 (a very common 
resident : Quetta); Fulton, op. cit. xvi. p. 54 (a common 
resident: Chitral) ; Cumming, t. c. p. 688 (abundant in 
April: Seistan) ; Ward, op. cit. xvii. p. 485. 
714. <$ ad. Kohat, 1850 ft., 20th March. 
Common in winter in the Miranzai Valley, a few individuals 
occurring as low as Kohat and Banda. Mr. Donald found a 
nest with young in Doaba Station (3000 feet) in May and 
says that the bird nests regularly at Shinauri (3800 feet). It 
possibly also does so at Thall (2550 feet), where I observed a 
solitary example on the 18th of May. In the Upper Kurram 
this species and P. domesticus are present in about equal 
numbers in summer, and build alongside one another in 
houses ; but the former, as noted by Capt. Fulton in his paper 
on “ The Birds of Chitral,” get the pick of the nesting-sites 
before the latter’s arrival, and in many cases P. domestiem 
has to put up with holes in cliffs. 
