376	STUKNIDJE.
fresh eggs, and three young birds respectively. Two of the nests
were in the nest-holes of Barbets, from which I had taken eggs
the month previous. 7th May, another nest containing four fresh
eggs.
"I can confirm Dr. Jerdon's statement, quoted in the Rough
Draft of 'Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds/ relative to this
species breeding in large buildings, having observed several nests
myself this season at Belgauni on the roofs of bungalows. In
one bungalow, the mess-house of the 83rd Regt., there were no
less than three nests at one time built under the eaves of the
roof."
Messrs. Davidson and "Wenden, writing of the Deccan, say :•—•
" 'Not quite so common as Acridofheres tristis. Breeds at Satara in
May."
Mr. Benjamin Aitken remarks :—" In Nests and Eggs, p. 433,
you write:—^c Dr. Jerdon says that at Madras it breeds about
large buildings, pagodas, houses, &c. This is doubtless correct, but
has not been confirmed as yet by any of my Southern Indian
correspondents, who all talk of finding its nest in holes of trees.'
On the 29th June last year I was at the Anniversary Meeting of
the Medical College, and the proceedings were disturbed by the
incessant clatter of two broods of young of this species. The nests
were in holes in the wall near the roof, and the two pairs of old
birds, which were feeding their young, kept coming and going the
whole time, flying in at the windows and popping into the holes
over the peoples^7 heads. In the following month a nest of young
were taken out of a hole in the outer wall of a house I was staying
at, and the birds laid again and hatched another brood.
" I very rarely saw the Black-headed Myna in Bombay, Poona,
or Berar, but here, in Madras, it is, if anything, commoner than
A. tristis."
And Mr. J. Davidson, writing from Mysore, also confirms
Jerdon's statement; he says :—" T. pagodarwn breeds here in holes
in the roofs of houses as well as in trees."
Of the breeding of this Myna in Ceylon, Colonel Legge says :—
" In the northern part of Ceylon this Myna breeds in July and
August, and nests, I am informed, in the holes of trees."
Mr. A. G-. R. Theobald notes that ^ft early in August I found a
nest of T. pagodarum at Ahtoor, the hill-station of the Shevaroys.
It was down in the inside of a partly hollow nut-tree log, attached
to a scaffolding, about 2| feet down and, say, 35 feet from the
ground, and was composed of dry leaves and a few feathers. It
contained three fresh eggs."
The eggs of this Myna are, of course, glossy and spotless, and
the colour varies from very pale bluish white to pale blue or
greenish blue. I have never seen an egg of this species of the full
clear sky-blue often exhibited by those of A. tristis, S. contra, and
A. giuginianus.
The eggs vary in length from 0-86 to 1-15, and in breadth from
0-66 to 0*8; but the average of fifty-four eggs is 0-97 by O75.