standing in fields or open jungle. The thorny Acacias are often
selected, but I have seen them on Sisoo and other trees.

The nest, placed in a stout fork as a rule, is a large, strong,
compact, stick structure, very like a Rook's nest at home, and like
these is used year after year, whether by the same birds or others of
the same species I cannot say. Of course they never breed in company:
I _never_ found two of their nests within 100 yards of each other,
and, as a rule, they will not be found within a quarter of a mile of
each other.

Five is, I think, the regular complement of eggs; very often I have
only found four fully incubated eggs, and on two or three occasions
six have, I know, been taken in one nest, though I never myself met
with so many.

I find the following old note of the first nest of this species that I
ever took:--

"At Hansie, in Skinner's Beerh, December 19, 1867, we found our first
Raven's nest. It was in a solitary Keekur tree, which originally of no
great size had had all but two upright branches lopped away. Between
these two branches was a large compact stick nest fully 10 inches deep
and 18 inches in diameter, and not more than 20 feet from the ground.
It contained five slightly incubated eggs, which the old birds evinced
the greatest objection to part with, not only flying at the head of
the man who removed them, but some little time after they had been
removed similarly attacking the man who ascended the tree to look at
the nest. After the eggs were gone, they sat themselves on a small
branch above the nest side by side, croaking most ominously, and
shaking their heads at each other in the most amusing manner, every
now and then alternately descending to the nest and scrutinizing every
portion of the cavity with their heads on one side as if to make sure
that the eggs were really gone."

Mr. W. Theobald makes the following note of this bird's nidification
in the neighbourhood of Pind Dadan Khan and Katas in the Salt Range:--

"Lay in January and February; eggs, four only; shape, ovato-pyriform;
size, 1.7 by 1.3; colour, dirty sap green, blotched with blackish
brown; also pale green spotted with greenish brown and neutral; nest
of sticks difficult to get at, placed in well-selected trees or holes
in cliffs."

I have not verified the fact of their breeding in holes in cliffs, but
it is very possible that they do. All I found near Pind Dadan Khan
and in the Salt Range were doubtless