NEST.
Ghonsala, Ghar, . Mtin. J Nido, Sr.
Nido, Nidio, Nidiata, IT. I Yiwah, . . TEL., Tung.
The nests of birds greatly vary. Those of the weaver bird, tailor bird,-honey-sucker, and oriole are made with much art: The edible nest of the colocalia swallow is formed of inspissated saliva in caverns; swallows, swifts, bee-eaters, and weaver birds build in companies ; certain ducks breed on cliffs or trees, and they must carry their young to the water, though this has not been observed. The Megapodidm gallinaceous birds, fotmd in Australia, its surrounding islands, and as far as the Philippines and the N.W. of Borneo, bury their eggs in sand, earth, or rubbish, and leave them to bo hatched by the sun or by fermentation. They hare large feet and long curved claws, and most of them rake together rubbish, dead leaves, sticks, and stones, earth and rotten wood, until they form a mound often 6 feet high and feet across, in the middle of which they bury their eggs. The eggs are as large as those of a swan, and of a brick-red colour, and are considered a great delicacy. The natives are able to say whether eggs be in the mound, and they rob them eagerly. It is said that a number of these birds unite to make a mound, and lay their eggs in it, and 40 or 50 are found in one heap. The mounds are found in dense thickets. The species of the Megapodidm in Lombok is as large as a hen, and entirely of a dark hue, with brown tints. It eats fallen fruits, earth-worms, snails, and centi pedes, but the flesh is white, and when properly cooked well flavoured.
Mr. Allan Ilume says the nests of the white scavenger vulture (Neophron ginginianus) of India are clumsy, ragged stick structures,—plat forms slightly depressed towards the centre, loosely put together, and lined with any soft substance they can most readily meet with. Old
rags are a great stand-by. In many parts of the country, wayfarers as they pass particular trees have a semi-religious custom of tearing a strip off their clothes to hang thereon. The tree (usually a babul) soon becomes loaded with rags and tatters. These are a perfect godsend to the Neophrons of the neighbourhood, who rob these rural shrines of their trophies by the score. Some times the rags of various colours are laid out neatly in the nest, as if an attempt had been made to please the eye ; sometimes they are irregularly jumbled up with the materials of the nest. Cotton wool, old and dirty,—stolen perhaps from the old rizais, or padded coverlids, thrown with half burnt dead bodies into the river,—occurs occa sionally in great lumps in the nest. And ho had several times found nests lined entirely with masses of human hair, which, in a country where near relatives shave their heads as a part of the funeral ceremonies, often lies thick • in the environs of villages and towns. Some times the birds line their nests with green leaves, much as Eutolmaetus Bonelli and many other eagles do. In size the nests vary from 2 feet to 3 feet in diameter, and from 4 inches to 10 inches in depth. Nominally they lay two eggs, but he had repeatedly found birds incubating a single egg ; twice he found three eggs in the same nest, but in each of these latter eases one of the three eggs was much smaller and feebler-coloured than the other two.—IVallace, pp. 154, 156.