and in India which are not tenanted by finch-larks. The nest is a
mere pad of grass and feathers placed on the ground in a tussock of
grass, beside a clod of earth, or in a depression, such as a
hoof-print. The most expeditious way of finding nests of these birds
in places where they are abundant is to walk with a line of beaters
over a tract of fallow land and mark carefully the spots from which
the birds rise.

With February the nesting season of the barn-owls (_Strix flammea_)
begins in the United Provinces, where their eggs have been taken as
early as the 17th.

Towards the end of the month the white-browed fantail flycatchers
(_Rhipidura albifrontata_) begin to nest. The loud and cheerful song
of this little feathered exquisite is a tune of six or seven notes
that ascend and descend the musical scale. It is one of the most
familiar of the sounds that gladden the Indian countryside. The broad
white eyebrow and the manner in which, with drooping wings and tail
spread into a fan, this flycatcher waltzes and pirouettes among the
branches of a tree render it unmistakable. The nest is a dainty little
cup, covered with cobweb, attached to one of the lower boughs of a
tree. So small is the nursery that sometimes the incubating bird looks
as though it were sitting across a branch. This species appears to
rear two broods every year. The first comes into existence in March or
late February in the United Provinces and five or six weeks later in
the Punjab; the second brood emerges during the monsoon.

The white-eyed buzzards--weakest of all the birds of prey--begin to
pair towards the end of the month. At this season they frequently rise
high above the earth and soar, emitting plaintive cries.

The handsome, but destructive, green parrots are now seeking, or
making, cavities in trees or buildings in which to deposit their white
eggs.

The breeding season for the alexandrine (_Palaeornis eupatrius_) and
the rose-ringed paroquet (_P. torquatus_) begins at the end of January
or early in February. March is the month in which most eggs are taken.

In April and May the bird-catchers go round and collect the nestlings
in order to sell them at four annas apiece. Green parrots are the most
popular cage birds in India. Destructive though they be and a scourge
to the husbandman, one cannot but pity the luckless captives doomed to
spend practically the whole of their existence in small iron cages,
which, when exposed to the sun in