ing season for the blue rock and green pigeons
ends. In the _sal_ forests the young jungle-fowl have now mostly
hatched out and are following the old hens, or feeding independently.

Some of the minivets are beginning to busy themselves with a second
brood.

The breeding operations of a few species begin in June.

Chief of these is that arch-villain _Corvus splendens_--the Indian
house-crow. Crows have no fine feathers, hence the cocks do not
"display" before the hens. To sing they know not how. Their courtship,
therefore, provides a feast for neither the eye nor the ear of man.
The lack of ornaments and voice perhaps explains the fact that among
crows there is no noisy love-making. Crows make a virtue of necessity.
Any attempt at courtship after the style of the costermonger is
resented by the whole corvine community. The only amorous display
permitted in public is head-tickling. The cock and the hen perch side
by side, one ruffles the feathers of the neck, the other inserts its
bill between the ruffled feathers of its companion and gently tickles
its neck, to the accompaniment of soft gurgles.

Crows are the most intelligent of birds. Like the other fowls of the
air in which the brain is well developed, they build rough untidy
nests--mere platforms placed in the fork of a branch of almost any
kind of tree. The usual materials used in nest-construction are twigs,
but crows do not limit themselves to these. They seem to take a
positive pride in pressing into service materials of an uncommon
nature. Cases are on record of nests composed entirely of
spectacle-frames, wires used for the fixing of the corks of soda-water
bottles, or pieces of tin discarded by tinsmiths.

Four, five or six eggs are laid; these are of a pale greenish-blue
hue, speckled or flaked with sepia markings. The hen alone collects
the materials for the nest, but the cock supervises her closely,
following her about and criticising her proceedings as she picks up
twigs and works them into the nest.

From the time of the laying of the first egg until the moment of the
departure of the last young bird, one or other of the parents always
mounts guard over the nest, except when they are chasing a koel. Crows
are confirmed egg-lifters and chicken-stealers; they apply their
standard of morality to other birds, and, in consequence, never leave
their own offspring unguarded. A crow's nest at which there is no
adult crow certainly contains neither eggs no