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.

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    above the nest. I once shot a female, sitting* on a partly incubated egg* and on skinning her, found a second egg in the oviduct ready for expulsion. I have repeatedly taken one perfectly fresh, and one partially incubated egg, out of the same nest, and it seems clear that these birds, like the Harriers and many Owls, begin to sit directly the first egg is laid. The eggs of this bird vary surprisingly in size and shape. Typically they are a broad oval, comparatively very large for the size of the bird, but long, oval, pyriform and nearly spherical varieties occur. I have taken a very great number of these eggs myself, and have extreme sizes of which the cubic con- tents of the one are fully double those of the other. In colour they are a decidedly creamy white, in texture often somewhat coarse, but, withall, more or less glossy. I have many specimens greatly exceeding in size the egg of Bubo maximus figured by Hewitson, while I have one specimen scarcely exceed- ing the egg of S. stridula which he figures. The eggs vary from 2'2 to 2’55 inches in length, and from 1*75 to 2 inches in breadth, but the average of 56 eggs measured was 2*33 by 1*89 inch. 72.—Ketupa ceylonensis, Gmel. The Brown Fish Owl breeds from December to March, but the majority lay, I think, in February. They always nest in the vicinity of water, sometimes choosing a cleft in rocks overhanging a mountain stream, sometimes a broad shelf in the clay cliffs of some river, sometimes a huge cavity in some old Banyan tree, and at times appropriating an old nest of Haliaeetus Macei. Where they make their own nest, on a ledge or recess of a cliff, it consists of little but a few sticks, mingled with a few feathers, or when in holes of trees, of a few feathers and dead leaves, but when they annex an old nest of the Fishing Eagle, (and I have several records of this) they seem to line it more carefully with finer twigs, grass and feathers. I have never found green leaves under the eggs of this species. Normally they lay two eggs ; I have altogether records of nine nests, and in none of these were there more than two eggs or young ones. Capt. G. Marshall writes : “ This bird is pretty common in the Saharunpore District; it lays two round white eggs, and returns year after year to the same nest. I found one nest in a hollow in the fork of a Banyan tree about 25 feet'from the ground, the hollow being so deep that the parent bird, sit- ting, could not be seen from the ground on any side. I found it accidentally, as I was climbing the tree for another nest. I watched it for three years; in 1866, on the 10th April, I found it with two young ones; in 1867, I visited it on the 17th March, and again found young ones; in 1868, on the 24th February, I found two eggs, the first of which was hatched on 14th March, the other egg I took. The tree in which the nest was, was a very large one, in a small grove of Jamun trees (.Eugenium jambolanum), on the bank of an extensive jheel near Sirsawar.” Mr. Brooks mentions that he “ shot a female on the 25th of February, sitting on two addled eggs. What little nest there was consisted of sticks and was placed on a shelf of the clay cliffs of the Jumna in the Etawah District. The shelf was slightly overhung, and on it, within twenty yards of the Fish Owl, a Neophron had her nest.”
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