10 Indian Birds VOL. 12 NO. 1 (PUBL. 26 AUGUST 2016) Nesting of Purple-rumped Sunbird Leptocoma zeylonica in southern Rajasthan, and its occurrence in the Thar Desert Gobind Sagar Bhardwaj & Harkirat Singh Sangha Bhardwaj, G. S. & Sangh, H. S., 2016. Nesting of Purple-rumped Sunbird Leptocoma zeylonica in southern Rajasthan, and its occurrence in the Thar Desert Indian BIRDS 12 (1): 10–11. Gobind Sagar Bhardwaj, Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Van Bhavan, New Pali Road, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. E-mail:
[email protected] [GSB] Harkirat Singh Sangha, B-27, Gautam Marg, Hanuman Nagar, Jaipur 302021, Rajasthan, India. E-mail:
[email protected] [HSS] [Corresponding author] Manuscript received on 17 March 2015. he Purple-rumped Sunbird Leptocoma zeylonica has been A pair of the sunbirds was continuously observed in this forest recorded in Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh, and Udaipur nursery from September 2006 onwards. The male regularly flew Tdistricts of Rajasthan, India (HSS pers. obsv.). However, to the Divisional Forest Officer’s bungalow and pecked at the its breeding was recorded for the first time in 2007 in a forest glass-framed photographs hung on the walls of the verandah. A nursery located in the middle of Pratapgarh (24.00ºN, 74.78ºE), nest was observed on 23 September 2007. It was an elongated southern Rajasthan. Its nest was discovered on a Manila tamarind pear-shaped nest, which was suspended at the extreme end of Pithcelobium dulce tree in a forest nursery. The well-wooded a branch of the Manila tamarind tree. The branch was in the 1.98 ha nursery provided suitable conditions for the sunbird to lower canopy, hardly 40 cm away from the wall of Forest Rest breed.