Part 15

Six to eight is considered the full complement of eggs, but the number is very variable, and I have taken three, four, and five well-incubated eggs.

Captain Beavan, to judge from his description, seems to have found a regular cup-shaped nest such, as I have never seen. He says:--"At Simla, April 20th, 1866, I found a nest of this species with young ones in it in an old wall in the garden. I secured the old bird for identification, and then released her. The nest contained seven young ones, and was large in proportion. The outside and bottom consists of the softest moss, the nest being carefully built between two stones, about a foot inside the wall; the rest of it is composed of the finest grey wool or fur. Diameter inside 2·5; outside about 5 inches. Depth inside nearly 3 inches; outside 3·6."

Captain Cock told me that he "found several nests in May and June in Cashmere. The first nest I found was in a natural cavity high up in a tree, containing three eggs, which I unfortunately broke while taking them out of the nest. The interior of the cavity was thickly lined with fur from some small animal, such as a hare or rat. I found my second nest close to my tent in a cleft of a pine, quite low down, only 3 feet from the ground. I cut it out and it contained five eggs of the usual type--broad, blunt little eggs, white, with rusty blotches."

Colonel G.F.L. Marshall writes:--"I have only found two nests of this species in Naini Tal, both had young (two in one nest, in the other I could not count) on the 25th April; they were at about 7000 feet elevation, built in holes in walls, the entrance in both cases being very small, having nothing to distinguish it from other tiny crevices, and nothing to lead any one to suppose that there was a nest inside. It was only by seeing the parent birds go in that the nest was discovered."

The eggs of this species are moderately broad ovals, with a very slight gloss. The ground-colour is a slightly pinkish white, and they are richly blotched and spotted, and more or less speckled (chiefly towards the larger end), with bright, somewhat brownish red.

The markings very commonly form a dense, almost confluent zone or cap about the large end, and they are generally more thinly scattered elsewhere, but the amount of the markings varies much in different eggs. In some, although they are thicker in the zone, they are still pretty thickly set over the entire surface, while in others they are almost confined to one end of the egg, generally the broad end.

These eggs vary much in size and in density of marking. The ordinary dimensions are about 0·61 by 0·47, but in a large series they vary in length from 0·57 to 0·72, and in breadth from 0·43 to 0·54. The very large eggs, however, indicated by these maxima are rare and abnormal.

47. Lophophanes rufinuchalis (Bl.). The Simla Black Tit.

Lophophanes rufinuchalis (Bl.). Jerd. B. Ind. ii. p. 274.

Mr. Brooks informs us that this Tit is common at Derali and other places of similar elevation. "I found a nest under a large stone in the middle of a hill foot-path, up and down which people and cattle were constantly passing; the nest contained newly-hatched young. This was the middle of May."

Dr. Scully, writing of the Gilgit district, tells us that this Tit is a denizen of the pine-forests, where it breeds.

Finally Captain Wardlaw Ramsay, writing in the 'Ibis,' states that this Tit was breeding in Afghanistan in May.

Subfamily PARADOXORNITHINAE.

50. Conostoma aemodium, Hodgs. The Red-billed Crow-Tit.

Conostoma aemodium. Hodgs., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 10; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 381.

A nest of the Red-billed Crow-Tit was sent me from Native Sikhim, where it was found at an elevation of about 10,000 feet, in a cluster of the small Ringal bamboo. It contained three eggs, two of which were broken in blowing them.

The nest is a very regular and perfect hemisphere, both externally and internally. It is very compactly made, externally of coarse grass and strips of bamboo-leaves, and internally very thickly lined with stiff but very fine grass-stems, about the thickness of an ordinary pin, very carefully curved to the shape of the nest. The coarser exterior grass appears to have been used when dry; but the fine grass, with which the interior is so densely lined, is still green. It is the most perfectly hemispherical nest I ever saw. Exteriorly it is exactly 6 inches in diameter and 3 in height; internally the cavity measures 4.5 in diameter and 2·25 in depth.

The egg is a regular moderately elongated oval, slightly compressed towards the smaller end. The shell is fine and thin, and has only a faint gloss. The ground-colour is a dull white, and it is sparsely blotched, streaked, and smudged with pale yellowish brown, besides which, about the large end, there are a number of small pale inky purple spots and clouds, looking as if they were beneath the surface of the shell.

The single egg preserved measures 1·11 by 0·8.

A nest sent me by Mr. Mandelli was found, he says, in May, in Native Sikhim, in a cluster of Ringal (hill-bamboo) at an elevation of nearly 10,000 feet. It is a large, rather broad and shallow cup, the great bulk of the nest composed of extremely fine hair-like grass-stems, obviously used when green, and coated thinly exteriorly with coarse blades of grass, giving the outside a ragged and untidy appearance. The greatest external diameter is 5.5, the height 3·2, but the cavity is 4·5 in diameter and 2.2 in depth, so that, though owing to the fine material used throughout except in the outer coating the nest is extremely firm and compact, it is not at all a massive-looking one.

60. Scaeorhynchus ruficeps (Bl.). The Larger Red-headed Crow-Tit.

Paradoxornis ruficeps, Bl., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 5.

Mr. Gammie writes from Sikhim:--"In May, at 2000 feet elevation, I took a nest of this bird, which appears to have been rarely, if ever, taken by any European, and is not described in your Rough Draft of 'Nests and Eggs.' It was seated among, and fastened to, the spray of a bamboo near its top, and is a deep, compactly built cap, measuring externally 3·5 inches wide and the same in depth; internally 2·7 wide by 1·9 deep. The material used is particularly clean and new-looking, and has none of the secondhand appearance of much of the building-stuffs of many birds. The outer layer is of strips torn off large grass-stalks and a very few cobwebs; the lining, of fine fibrous strips, or rather threads, of bamboo-stems. There were three eggs, which were ready for hatching-off. They averaged 0·83 in. by 0·63 in. I send you the nest and two of the eggs.

"Both Jerdon and Tickell say they found this bird feeding on grain and other seeds, but those I examined had all confined their diet to different sorts of insects, such as would be found about the flowers of bamboo, buckwheat, &c. Probably they do eat a few seeds occasionally, but their principal food is certainly insects. Very usually, in winter especially, they feed in company with Gampsorhynchus rufulus. Rather curious that the two Red-heads should affect each other's society."

The eggs are broad ovals, rather cylindrical, very blunt at both ends. The shell fine, with a slight gloss. The ground is white, and it is rather thinly and irregularly spotted, blotched, and smeared in patches with a dingy yellowish brown, chiefly about the larger end, to which also are nearly confined the secondary markings, which are pale greyish lilac or purplish grey.

61. Scaeorhynchus gularis (Horsf.). The Hoary-headed Crow-Tit.

Paradoxornis gularis, Horsf., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p, 5.

A nest sent me by Mr. Mandelli as belonging to this species was found, he tells me, at an elevation of 8000 feet in Native Sikhim on the 17th May. It was placed in a fork amongst the branches of a medium-sized tree at a height of about 30 feet from the ground. The nest is a very massive cup, composed of soft grass-blades, none of them much exceeding ·1 inch in width, wound round and round together very closely and compactly, and then tied over exteriorly everywhere, but not thickly, with just enough wool and wild silk to keep the nest perfectly strong and firm. Inside, the nest is lined with extremely fine grass-stems; the nest is barely 4 inches in diameter exteriorly and 2·5 in height; the egg-cavity is 2·4 in diameter and 1·2 in depth.