The nesting activities of the fowls of the air are at their lowest ebb in November.  Some thirty species are known to rear up young in the present month as opposed to five hundred in May.  In the United Provinces the only nest which the ornithologist can be sure of finding is that of the white-backed vulture.

Some of the amadavats are still nesting.  Most of the eggs laid by these birds in the rains yielded young ones in September, but it often happens that the brood does not emerge from the eggs until the end of October, with the result that in the earlier part of the present month parties of baby amadavats are to be seen enjoying the first days of their aerial existence.  A few black-necked storks do not lay until November; thus there is always the chance of coming upon an incubating stork in the present month.  Here and there a grey partridge’s nest containing eggs may be found.  As has been said, the nesting season of this species is not well-defined.

The quaint little thick-billed mites known as white-throated munias (Munia malabarica) are also very irregular as to their nesting habits.  Their eggs have been taken in every month of the year except June.

In some places Indian sand-martins are busy at their nests, but the breeding season of the majority of these birds does not begin until January.

Pallas’s fishing-eagle is another species of which the eggs are likely to be found in the present month.  If a pair of these birds have a nest they betray the fact to the world by the unmusical clamour they make from sunrise to sunset.

The nesting season of the tawny eagle or wokab (Aquila vindhiana) begins in November.  The nest is a typical raptorial one, being a large platform of sticks.  It may attain a length of three feet and it is usually as broad as it is long; it is about six inches in depth.  It is generally lined with leaves, sometimes with straw or grass and a few feathers.  It is placed at the summit of a tree.  Two eggs are usually laid.  These are dirty white, more or less speckled with brown.  The young ones are at first covered with white down; in this respect they resemble baby birds of prey of other species.  The man who attempts to take the eggs or young of this eagle must be prepared to ward off the attack of the female, who, as is usual among birds of prey, is larger, bolder and more powerful than the male.  At Lahore the writer saw a tawny eagle stoop at a man who had climbed a tree and secured the eagle’s eggs.  She seized his turban and flew off with it, having inflicted a scratch on his head.  For the recovery of his turban the egg-lifter had to thank a pair of kites that attacked the eagle and caused her to drop that article while defending herself from their onslaught.

DECEMBER

Striped squirrels raced; the mynas perked and pricked,
The seven sisters chattered in the thorn,
The pied fish-tiger hung above the pool,
The egrets stalked among the buffaloes,
The kites sailed circles in the golden air;
About the painted temple peacocks flew. 

                                                      ARNOLD, The Light of Asia.