Part 45

A nest sent to me last year by Mr. Gammie was found by him on the 24th April, at an elevation of about 5000 feet, in the neighbourhood of Rungbee. It was built by the side of a stream in a small bush, at a height of about 3 feet from the ground, and contained three eggs. The nest is a deep and, for the size of the bird, very massive cup, exteriorly composed entirely of broad flag-like grass-leaves, with which, however, a few slender stems of creepers are intermingled, internally of grass-roots; the egg-cavity being thinly lined with coarse, black buffalo-hair. Externally the nest is more than 5 inches in diameter and nearly 4 inches high; but the egg-cavity, which is very regularly shaped, is 2½ inches in diameter and 2 inches in depth.

This year Mr. Gammie writes to me:--"I have taken many nests of the Red-billed Liothrix here in our Chinchona reserves, at all elevations from 3500 to 5000 feet. They breed in May and June, amongst dense scrub, placing their nests in shrubs, at heights of from 3 to 5 feet from the ground, and either suspending them from horizontal branches, or hanging them between several upright stems, to which they firmly attach them. The nest itself is cup-shaped and composed principally of dry bamboo-leaves held together by a few fibres, and a few strings of green moss wound round the outside. The lining consists of a few black hairs, and the usual number of eggs is three. A nest I recently measured was externally 4 inches in diameter and 2·7 in height, while the cavity was 2·6 across by 1·9 in depth."

Mr. Gammie subsequently found a nest on the very late date of 17th October at Rishap, Darjeeling. It contained three eggs, two of which were addled.

Dr. Jerdon says that at Darjeeling he "got the nest and eggs repeatedly; the nest made chiefly of grass, with roots and fibres, and fragments of moss, and usually containing three or four eggs, bluish, white, with a few purple and red blotches. It is generally placed in a leafy bush at no great height from the ground. Gould, quoting from Mr. Shore's notes, says that the eggs are black spotted with yellow: this is of course erroneous. I have taken the nest myself on several occasions, and killed the bird, and in every case the eggs were coloured as above."

I wish to add here, as I have abused him occasionally, that Mr. Shore was, I understand, a most excellent man, and that I have now come to the conclusion that the extraordinary fictions that he recorded about the eggs of birds can only have been due to colour-blindness of a peculiarly aggravated nature. It is not that he mistook eggs, but that he describes impossible eggs--Kingfishers' eggs variegated black and white, and here in this case black eggs spotted with yellow! Why, there are no such eggs in the whole world, I believe. On the other hand, his whole life proves that he could not have deliberately set to work to invent falsehoods. To return.

The eggs vary a good deal in shade and size, but are more or less long ovals, slightly pointed towards the lesser end. The ground-colour is a delicate very pale green or greenish blue, in one, not very common type, almost pure white, and they are pretty boldly blotched or spotted and speckled as the case may be, and clouded, most thickly towards the large end, and very often almost exclusively in a zone or cap round this latter, with various shades of red or purple and brown. Some blotches in some eggs are almost carmine-red, but the majority are brownish red or reddish brown, varying much in depth and intensity of colour. There is something Shrike-like in the markings of many eggs; and where the markings are most numerous, namely at the large end, they are commonly intermingled with streaks and clouds of pale lilac. The smaller end of the egg is often entirely free from markings. I should mention that all the eggs have a faint gloss, and that some are decidedly glossy.

They vary in length from 0·76 to 0·95, and in breadth from 0·59 to 0·66; but the average of thirty-four eggs is 0·85 by 0·62.

237. Pteruthius erythropterus (Vig.). The Red-winged Shrike-Tit.

Pteruthius erythropterus (Vig.) Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 245; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 609.

Writing from Murree, Colonel C.H.T. Marshall says:--"There is no record about the nidification of this species. Its nest is exceedingly difficult to find, and it was only by long and careful watching through field-glasses that Captain Cock discovered that there was a nest at the top of a very high chestnut-tree, to and from which the birds kept flying with building-materials in their beaks. The nest is most skilfully concealed, being at the top of the tree, with bunches of leaves both above and below. The nest, like that of the Oriole, is built pendent in a fork. It is somewhat roughly made of moss and hair. The eggs are pinky white, blotched with red, forming in some a ring round the larger end. They average 0·9 in length and 0·65 in breadth. We were fortunate enough to secure two nests; both were more than 60 feet from the ground. Breeds in the end of May, at an elevation of 7000 feet."

Captain Cock says:--"I first found this bird building its nest on the top of a high chestnut-tree at Murree in the month of May. When the nest was ready I took my friend Captain C.H.T. Marshall to be present at the taking of it, as it had never, I think, been taken before. We took the nest on the 30th May.

"It was an open flattish cup, like the nest of O. kundoo in structure, only shallower. It contained three eggs, pinky white, covered with a shower of claret spots that at the larger end formed a cap of dark claret colour. Another nest, which I took in June from the top of an oak, contained two eggs."

To Colonel Marshall and Captain Cock I am indebted for a nest and egg of this species.

The nest is a moderately deep cup, suspended between two prongs of a horizontal fork. Externally it is about 4 inches in diameter and about 3 inches in depth. The egg-cavity is nearly hemispherical, 3 inches in diameter and 1·5 in depth. It is a very loosely made structure, composed internally of not very fine roots and externally coated with green moss. Along the lines of suspension a good deal of wool is incorporated in the structure, and it is chiefly by this wool that the nest is suspended. The fork is a slender one, the prongs being from 0·3 to 0·4 in diameter.

The egg is a broad oval, a good deal pointed towards the small end. The shell is very fine and compact, and has a fine gloss. The ground-colour is white or pinky white, and is pretty thickly speckled and finely spotted all over with brownish red and a little pale inky purple. Just towards the large end the markings are very dense, and form, more or less of a confluent cap of mingled brownish red and pale lilac, the latter everywhere appearing to underlie the former.

The egg was taken on the 10th June, and measures 0·9 by 0·68.

239. Pteruthius melanotis, Hodgs. The Chestnut-throated Shrike-Tit.

Allotrius oenobarbus, Temm. apud Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 246. Allotrius melanotis, Hodgs., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 611.

According to Mr. Hodgson's notes and figures, the Chestnut-throated Shrike-Tit breeds in Sikhim and Nepal up to an elevation of 6000 or 7000 feet. The nest is placed at a height of 6 to 10 feet from the ground, between some slender, leafy, horizontal fork, between which it is suspended like that of an Oriole or White-eye. It is composed of moss and moss-roots and vegetable fibres, beautifully and compactly woven into a shallow cup some 4 inches in diameter, and with a cavity some 2·5 in diameter and less than 1 in depth. Interiorly the nest is lined with hair-like fibres and moss-roots; exteriorly it is adorned with pieces of lichen. The eggs are two or three in number, very regular ovals, about 0·77 in length by 0·49 in width. The ground-colour is a delicate pinky lilac, and they are speckled and spotted with violet or violet-purple, the markings being most numerous towards the large end, where they have a tendency to form a mottled zone.

243. Aegithine tiphia (Linn.). The Common Iora.

Iora zeylonica (Gm.) et I. typhia (Linn.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, pp. 101, 103. Aegithine tiphia (Linn.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. nos. 467, 468.

I have already on several occasions (see especially 'Stray Feathers,' 1877, vol. v, p. 428) recorded my inability to distinguish as distinct species Ae. tiphia and Ae. zeylonica. I am quite open to conviction; but believing them, so far as my present investigations go, to be inseparable, I propose to treat them as a single species in the present notice.

The Common Iora (the genus, though possibly nearly allied, is too distinct from Chloropsis to allow me to adopt, as Jerdon does, one common trivial name for both) breeds in different localities from May to September. I have taken nests and eggs of typical examples of both supposed species, and have had them sent me with the parent birds by many correspondents; and though both vary a good deal, I am convinced that all the variations which occur in the nests and eggs of one race occur also in those of the other. If one gets only two or three clutches of the eggs of each, great differences, naturally attributed to difference of species (see Captain Cock's remarks, infrà), may be detected; but I have seen more than fifty, and, so far as I am concerned, I have no hesitation in asserting that, as in the case of the birds so in that of their nests and eggs, no constant differences can be detected if only sufficiently large series are compared.

The birds build usually on the upper surface of a horizontal bough, at a height of from 10 to 25 feet from the ground. Sometimes, when the bough is more or less slanting, the nest assumes somewhat more of a pocket-shape. Occasionally it is built between three or four slender twigs, forming an upright fork; but this is quite exceptional.

As a rule nests of the Iora very closely resemble those of Leucocerca, so much so that when I sent a beautiful photograph of a nest, which I had myself watched building, of the latter species to Mr. Blyth, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be a nest of the former. There is, however, a certain amount of difference; the Iora's nests are looser and somewhat less compact and firm. My experience does not confirm Mr. Brooks's remarks (vide infrà) that they are usually shallower; on the contrary all those now before me are, as indeed all the many I can remember to have seen were, deep, thin-walled cups, which had been placed on more or less horizontal branches, not uncommonly where some upright-growing twig afforded the nest additional security. The egg-cavity averages about 2 inches in diameter, and varies from an inch to 1¼ inch in depth; the walls, composed of vegetable fibres, and varying in different specimens from only one eighth to three eighths of an inch in thickness, are everywhere thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also the nest is firmly attached to the branch on which it is seated, as well as, where such adjoin the nest, to any little twig springing from that branch. Interiorly they are more or less neatly lined with very fine grass-stems. The bottom of the nest in its thinnest part is rarely above one eighth of an inch in thickness, but running, as it so often does, down the curving sides of the branch, it becomes a good deal thicker, and where placed on a small branch, say not exceeding an inch in diameter, the lateral portions of the bottom of the nest are sometimes more than half an inch in thickness.

One nest which I obtained recently in the Botanical Gardens at Calcutta was built in an upright fork of four slender twigs; and in this case the bottom of the nest was obtusely conical, and at its deepest point may have been nearly an inch in depth. I have never seen a similar nest.

The eggs are normally three in number, but I have at times found only two, and these more or less incubated.

Mr. Brooks, writing of a nest he took in the Mirzapoor District, says:--"Did you ever get particulars of the nest of Iora zeylonica on the forked branch of a mango-tree 12 or 14 feet from the ground? Nest composed of the same materials as that of Leucocerca albifrontata, but not quite so neat and much more shallow; eggs salmon-coloured and spotted with pale reddish brown, intermixed with a few larger dashes of purple-grey. The bird lays in July; three eggs. This is the only nest I have not taken since I came to India the second time."