of belated rollers may be seen feeding their young. Before the
beginning of the month nearly all the young crows and koels have
emerged from the egg, and the great majority of them have left the
nest. Young house-crows are distinguished from adults by the
indistinctness of the grey on the neck. They continually open their
great red mouths to clamour for food.

The wire-tailed swallows, swifts, pied crested-cuckoos,
crow-pheasants, butcher-birds, cuckoo-shrikes, fantail flycatchers,
babblers, white-necked storks, wren-warblers, weaver-birds, common and
pied mynas, peafowl, and almost all the resident water-birds, waders
and swimmers, except the terns and the plovers, are likely to have
eggs or young. The nesting season of the swifts and butcher-birds is
nearly over. In the case of the others it is at its height. The
wire-tailed swallows and minivets are busy with their second broods.
The nests of most of these birds have already been described.

The Indian peafowl (_Pavo cristatus_) usually lay their large white
eggs on the ground in long grass or thick undergrowth. Sometimes they
nestle on the grass-grown roofs of deserted buildings or in other
elevated situations. Egrets, night-herons, cormorants, darters,
paddy-birds, openbills, and spoonbills build stick nests in trees.
These birds often breed in large colonies. In most cases the site
chosen is a clump of trees in a village which is situated on the
border of a tank. Sometimes all these species nest in company. Hume
described a village in Mainpuri where scores of the above-mentioned
birds, together with some whistling teal and comb-ducks, nested
simultaneously. After a site has been selected by a colony the birds
return year after year to the place for nesting purposes. The majority
of the eggs are laid in July, the young appearing towards the end of
that month or early in the present one.

The nest of the sarus crane (_Grus antigone_) is nearly always an
islet some four feet in diameter, which either floats in shallow water
or rises from the ground and projects about a foot above the level of
the water. The nest is composed of dried rushes. It may be placed in a
_jhil_, a paddy field, or a borrow pit by the railway line. A
favourite place is the midst of paddy cultivation in some low-lying
field where the water is too deep to admit of the growing of rice. Two
very large white eggs, rarely three, are laid. This species makes no
attempt to conceal its nest. In the c