The Indian Oriole breeds from May to August (the great majority,
however, laying in June and July) almost throughout the plains country
of India and in the lower ranges of the Himalayas to an elevation of
4000 feet. In Southern and Eastern Bengal it only, so far as I
know, occurs as a straggler during the cold season, and I have no
information of its breeding there. It does not apparently ascend the
Nilghiris, and throughout the southern portion of the peninsula
it breeds very sparingly, if at all; indeed, it is just at the
commencement of the breeding-season, when the mangoes are ripening,
that Upper India is suddenly visited by vast numbers of this species
migrating from the south.

The nest is placed on some large tree, I do not think the bird has
any special preference, and is a moderately deep purse or pocket,
suspended between some slender fork towards the extremity of one of
the higher boughs. From below it looks like a round ball of grass
wedged into the fork, and the sitting bird is completely hidden within
it; but when in the hand it proves to be a most beautifully woven
purse, shallower or deeper as the case may be, hung from the fork of
two twigs, made of fine grass and slender strips of some tenacious
bark and bound round and round the twigs, and secured to them much
as a prawn-net is to its wooden framework. Some nests contain no
extraneous matters, but others have all kinds of odds and ends--scraps
of newspaper or cloth, shavings, rags, snake-skins, thread,
&c.--interwoven in the exterior. The interior is always neatly lined
with fine grass-stems.

Very commonly the bird so selects the site for its nest that the
leaves of the twigs it uses as a framework form more or less of a
shady canopy overhead; in fact, as a rule, it is from very few points
of view that even a passing bird of prey can catch sight of the female
on her eggs. Possibly the brilliant plumage of the bird (which has
endowed it amongst the natives with the name of _Peeluk_, or "The
Yellow One") may have had something to do with the concealment it so
generally affects.

The nests vary a good deal in size. I have seen one with an internal
cavity 31/2 inches in diameter and over 21/2 deep. I have seen others
scarcely over 21/2 inches in diameter and not 2 in depth, which you
could have put bodily, twigs and all, inside the former. As a rule,
the purse is strong and compact, the material closely matted and
firmly bound together; but I hav