The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 | Page 8

gloss, though here and there a fairly glossy egg is met with. Eggs from
various parts of the Himalayas, of the plains of Upper India, of the hills
and plains of Southern India, do not differ in any respect. Inter se the
eggs from each locality differ surprisingly in size, in tone of colour, and
in character of markings; but when you compare a dozen or twenty
from each locality, you find that these differences are purely individual

and in no degree referable to locality.
There are just as big eggs and just as small ones from Simla and
Kotegurh, from Cashmere, from Etawah, Bareilly, Futtehgurh, from
Kotagherry, and Conoor; all that one can possibly say is that perhaps
the Plains birds do on the average lay a shade larger eggs than the
Himalayan or Nilghiri ones.
Taking the eggs as a whole, I think that in size and shape they are about
intermediate between the eggs of the European Carrion-Crow and Rook.
But they vary, as I said, astonishingly in size, from 1·5 to 1·95 in length,
and in breadth from 1·12 to 1·22, and I have one perfectly spherical egg,
a deformity of course, which measures 1·25 by 1·2.
The average of thirty Himalayan eggs is 1·73 by 1·18, of twenty Plains
eggs 1·74 by 1·2, and of fifteen Nilghiri eggs 1·7 by 1·18. I would
venture to predict that with fifty of each, there would not be a
hundredth of an inch between their averages.
7. Corvus splendens, Vieill. _The Indian House-Crow_.
Corvus splendens, _Vieill. Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 298. Corvus impudicus,
_Hodgs., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 663.
Throughout India and Upper Burma the Common Crow resides and
breeds, not ascending the hills either in Southern or Northern India to
any great elevation, but breeding up to 4000 feet in the Himalayas.
The breeding-season par excellence is June and July, but occasional
nests will be found earlier even in Upper India, and in Southern and
Eastern India a great number lay in May. The nests are commonly
placed in trees without much regard to size or kind, though densely
foliaged ones are preferred, and I have just as often found several in the
same tree as single ones. At times they will build in nooks of ruins or
large deserted buildings, where these are in well inhabited localities,
but out of many thousands I have only seen three or four nests in such
abnormal positions.
The nest is placed in some fork, and is usually a ragged stick platform,
with a central depression lined with grass-roots; but they are not
particular as to material; I have found wool, rags, grass, and all kinds of
vegetable fibre, and Mr. Blyth mentions that he has "seen several nests
composed more or less, and two almost exclusively, of the wires taken
from soda-water bottles, which had been purloined from the heaps of
these wires commonly set aside by the native servants until they

amount to a saleable quantity." Four is the normal number of eggs laid,
but I often have found five, and on two occasions six. It is in this bird's
nest that the Koel chiefly lays.
Writing of Nepal, Dr. Scully remarks:--"In the valley it lays in May and
June; some twenty nests were once examined on the 23rd June, and half
the number then contained young birds."
Major Bingham says:--"Very common, of course, both at Allahabad
and at Delhi, and breeds in June, July, and beginning of August. At
Allahabad it is much persecuted by the Koel (_Eudynamys orientalis_),
every fourth or fifth nest that I found in some topes of mango-trees
having one or two of the Koel's eggs."
Colonel Butler informs me that in Karachi it "begins to lay in the
mangrove bushes in the harbour as early as the end of May;" and that it
"breeds in the neighbourhood of Deesa in June, July, and August,
commencing to build in the last week of May."
Later, he writes:--"Belgaum, 15th May, 1879. Found numerous nests in
the native infantry lines in low trees, containing fresh and incubated
eggs and young birds of all sizes. In the same locality, on the 30th
March, 1880, I found a nest containing four young birds able to fly; the
eggs must therefore have been laid quite as early as the middle of
February, if not earlier."
Mr. G.W. Vidal writes:--"The Common Crow appears to have two
broods in the year in our district (Ratnagiri), the first in April and May,
and the second in November and December. In these four months I
have found nests, eggs, and young birds in several different places in
the district, and as yet at no other times. It is extremely improbable that
there should be one breeding-season lasting from April to