to appear, but they visit only the eastern parts of Northern India.  Large numbers of them sojourn in Bengal and Assam.  Stragglers appear in the eastern portion of the United Provinces; in the western districts and in the Punjab this snipe is a rara avis.  By the third week in August good bags of pintail snipe are sometimes obtained in Bengal.  The fantail or full-snipe (G. coelestis) is at least one week later in arriving.  This species has been shot as early as the 24th August, but there is no general immigration of even the advance-guard until quite the end of the month.

The jack-snipe (G. gallinula) seems never to appear before September.

Most of the monsoon broods of the Indian cliff-swallow emerge from the eggs in August.  The “rains” breeding season of the amadavats or red munias is now over, and the bird-catcher issues forth to snare them.

His stock-in-trade consists of some seed and two or three amadavats in one of the pyramid-shaped wicker cages that can be purchased for a few annas in any bazaar.  To the base of one of the sides of the cage a flap is attached by a hinge.  The flap, which is of the same shape and size as the side of the cage, is composed of a frame over which a small-meshed string net is stretched.  A long string is fastened to the apex of the flap and passed through a loop at the top of the cage.  Selecting an open space near some tall grass in which amadavats are feeding, the bird-catcher sets down the cage and loosens the string so that the flap rests on the earth.  Some seed is sprinkled on the flap.  Then the trapper squats behind a bush, holding the end of the string in his hand.  The cheerful little lals inside the cage soon begin to twitter and sing, and their calls attract the wild amadavats in the vicinity.  These come to the cage, alight on the flap, and begin to eat the seed.  The bird-catcher gives the string a sharp pull and thus traps his victims between the flap and the side of the cage.  He then disentangles them, places them in the cage, and again sets the trap.

Almost all the birds that rear up their young in the spring have finished nesting duties for the year by August.  Here and there a pair 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.