Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/54

22 Palestine. It is not easy to separate the breeding ranges of ruficollis and laurencei, but the former appears to be essentially a bird of deserts and bare hills whilst the Punjab Raven is more a bird of wooded country, though both are great wanderers and overlap one another constantly in their non-breeding haunts.

Nidification. This Raven makes a large nest of sticks, sometimes lined with a little wool, leaves or smaller, softer twigs and places it near the top of a tree either in the open or in thin forest. The eggs number from four to six, generally four or five and are a pale blue-green marked with deep brown and with underlying marks of pale grey and neutral tint. The markings are usually thickly distributed over the whole surface but are sometimes bolder and blacker and more sparse, making the eggs very handsome in appearance. They are typically rather long ovals. They average about 50.7 × 33.6 mm. The breeding season is from the end of December to early March.

Habits. The Punjab Raven is a very bold, confiding bird and has all the habits of the Common Crow, attending camps and villages and going about without fear but with the wariness of his tribe. Hume has noticed how a large number of Ravens die annually in the autumn on their first arrival in Sind from no apparent cause. This form of Raven will not be found far from trees in the breeding season, nor does it haunt hills and mountains of any great elevation, though it has been found at about 6,000 feet in the Simla Hills by Mr. P. Dodsworth.