“In a nest in the wall of our verandah we found four young ones.  This was particularly noteworthy, because from my study-window the pair had been watched for the last month, first courting, then flitting in and out of the hole with straws and feathers, ever and anon clinging to the mouth of the aperture, and laboriously dislodging some projecting point of mortar; then marching up and down on the ground, the male screeching out his harsh love-song, bowing and swelling out his throat all the while, and then rushing after and soundly thrashing any chance Crow (four times his weight at least) that inadvertently passed too near him; never during the whole time had either bird been long absent, and both had been seen together daily at all hours.  I made certain that they had not even begun to sit, and behold there were four fine young ones a full week old chirping in the nest!  Clearly these birds are not close sitters down here; but I well remember a pair at Mussoorie, some 6000 feet above the level of the sea, the most exemplary parents, one or other being on the eggs at all hours of the day and night.  The morning’s sun beats full upon the wall in the inner side of which the entrance to the nest is; the nest itself is within 4 inches of the exterior surface; at 11 o’clock the thermometer gave 98 deg. as its temperature.  I have often observed in the river Terns (Seena aurantia, Rhynchops albicollis, Sterna javanica) and Pratincoles (Glareola lactea) who lay their eggs in the bare white glittering river-sands, that so long as the sun is high and the sand hot they rarely sit upon their eggs, though one or other of the parents constantly remains beside or hovering near and over them, but in the early morning, in somewhat cold and cloudy days, and as the night draws on, they are all close sitters.  I suspect that instinct teaches the birds that, when the natural temperature of the nest reaches a certain point, any addition of their body-heat is unnecessary, and this may explain why during the hot days (when we alone noticed them), in this very hot hole, the parent Mynas spent so little of their time in the nest whilst the process of hatching was going on.”

They lay indifferently four or five eggs.  I have just as often found the former as the latter number, but I have never yet met with more.

From Lucknow Mr. G. Reid tells us:—­“Generally speaking the Common Myna, like the Crow (Corvus splendens) commences to breed with the first fall of rain in June—­early or late as the case may be—­and has done breeding by the middle of September.  It nests indiscriminately in old ruins, verandahs, walls of houses, &c., but preferentially, I think, in holes of trees, laying generally four, but sometimes five eggs.”

Colonel E.A.  Butler writes:—­“In Karachi Mynas begin to lay at the end of April.  The Common Myna breeds in the neighbourhood of Deesa during the monsoon, principally in the months of July and August, at which season every pair seems to be engaged in nidification.  I have taken nests containing fresh eggs during the first week of September; and birds that have had their first nests robbed or young destroyed probably lay even later still.”