There is much to interest the ornithologist in June.

Of the birds whose nests have been previously described the following are likely to have eggs or young:  white-eyes, ioras, tailor-birds, king-crows, robins, sparrows, tree-pies, seven sisters, cuckoo-shrikes, Indian wren-warblers (second brood), sunbirds (second brood), swifts, fantail flycatchers (second brood), orioles, paradise flycatchers, grey horn-bills, and the various mynas, bulbuls, butcher-birds, doves, pigeons and lapwings.  The following species have young which either are in the nest or have only recently left it:  roller, hoopoe, brown rock-chat, magpie-robin, coppersmith, green barbet, nightjar, white-eyed buzzard, pipit, wire-tailed swallow, white-breasted kingfisher, grey partridge, kite, golden-backed woodpecker (second brood), and the several species of bee-eater and lark.

With June the breeding season for the blue rock and green pigeons ends.  In the sal forests the young jungle-fowl have now mostly hatched out and are following the old hens, or feeding independently.

Some of the minivets are beginning to busy themselves with a second brood.

The breeding operations of a few species begin in June.

Chief of these is that arch-villain Corvus splendens—­the Indian house-crow.  Crows have no fine feathers, hence the cocks do not “display” before the hens.  To sing they know not how.  Their courtship, therefore, provides a feast for neither the eye nor the ear of man.  The lack of ornaments and voice perhaps explains the fact that among crows there is no noisy love-making.  Crows make a virtue of necessity.  Any attempt at courtship after the style of the costermonger is resented by the whole corvine community.  The only amorous display permitted in public is head-tickling.  The cock and the hen perch side by side, one ruffles the feathers of the neck, the other inserts its bill between the ruffled feathers of its companion and gently tickles its neck, to the accompaniment of soft gurgles.

Crows are the most intelligent of birds.  Like the other fowls of the air in which the brain is well developed, they build rough untidy nests—­mere platforms placed in the fork of a branch of almost any kind of tree.  The usual materials used in nest-construction are twigs, but crows do not limit themselves to these.  They seem to take a positive pride in pressing into service materials of an uncommon nature.  Cases are on record of nests composed entirely of spectacle-frames, wires used for the fixing of the corks of soda-water bottles, or pieces of tin discarded by tinsmiths.

Four, five or six eggs are laid; these are of a pale greenish-blue hue, speckled or flaked with sepia markings.  The hen alone collects the materials for the nest, but the cock supervises her closely, following her about and criticising her proceedings as she picks up twigs and works them into the nest.