Nests and eggs of Indian birds : rough draft / by Allan Hume.

  • Allan Hume
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nests and eggs of Indian birds : rough draft / by Allan Hume. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    640/680 page 628
    inside the walls, I found a community of these birds, which had built their nests on them, probably to the number of fifty. “ The trees inside the walls were as thickly covered with nests as those out- side, and the birds, which appeared docile and tame, did not mind the noise of the people passing beneath them. When I visited the village, the young birds were all well fledged and most of them able to fly. The villagers informed me that the old birds move oft to the river in the very early dawn, and having caught a sufficient supply for their young return about 8 or 9 o^clock; a second expedition is made during the afternoon. Some idea of the quantity of fish caught by these birds may be gathered from what the people told me, that quantities of fine fish were dropped by the old birds when feeding their young and were eaten by them. A young bird of this species, which I shot in Sindh, disgorged a large quantity of small eels. This Ibis breeds during the month of February. The nest is composed of small sticks, and is placed at the top of the trees; if there are many on the same tree, they are placed pretty close together. They lay three or four eggs of a dull opaque white, nearly 2*6 inches in length by rather more than 1*8 inch in width. The young birds are able to fly by the month of May/’ Dr. Jerdon states that “ it breeds on high trees, making a large nest of sticks, and laying four white eggs, sometimes faintly blotched with pale brown. Burgess found fifty nests together in some large Banian trees in a village in the Dekhan in February. Further north it is later, breeding in May and J une.v This latter requires verification. I have not been able to ascertain that they breed anywhere in India in May or June. The eggs, which vary much in size and somewhat in shape, are typically elongated ovals, a good deal compressed towards one end. At times they are somewhat pyriform, at others very perfect ovals. The shell is rather fine and compact, of a dull white color, much stained and soiled as incubation proceeds, and occasionally with a few dingy brown spots and streaks. They are entirely devoid of gloss. In some cases they have a very faint greenish tinge, which fades soon after the egg has been blown. In size they average, I think, somewhat larger than those of the Spoon-bill, but in general appearance and texture of shell they most nearly resemble the eggs of ThresJciornis melanocepJialus, which latter, however, average very much smaller. Held up to the light and looking into the egg through the aperture, the shells of the present species are a pale bluish green or pale dingy green, while those of ThresJciornis melanocephalus are a very dark dusky green; on the other hand the shells of the Spoon-bill are a dusky yellowish brown, in this respect assimilating to those of Anasto- mus oscitans; while those of Mycteria inclica are a green so dark as to be almost black, and those of Melanopelargus episcopus a green of nearly the same shade as those of ThresJciornis melanocephalus, or at times a trifle darker. In length the eggs vary from 2*58 to 2*95 (though I have one abnormally large egg that measures 3*2), and in breadth from 1*75 to 1*98; but the aver- age of twenty-seven eggs is 2*77 by 1*88. 939.—Plaialea leucorodia, Lin. The Spoon-bill breeds, I believe, throughout India, and is common in Sindh and other parts of the North-West, where the Pelican Ibis is rare or unknown.
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