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."