Part 73

394. Hypolais rama (Sykes). Sykes's Tree-Warbler.

Phyllopneuste rama (Sykes), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 189. Iduna caligata, Licht., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 553.

I have never myself obtained the nest and eggs of Sykes's Tree-Warbler, P. rama, apud Jerd. On the 1st April, at Etawah, my friend Mr. Brooks shot a male of this species off a nest; and I saw the bird, nest, and eggs within an hour, and visited the spot later. The nest was placed in a low thorny bush, about a foot from the ground, on the side of a sloping bank in one of the large dry ravines that in the Etawah District fringe the River Junina for a breadth of from a mile to four miles. The nest was nearly egg-shaped, with a circular entrance near the top. It was loosely woven with coarse and fine grass, and a little of the fibre of the "sun" (Crotalaria juncea), and very neatly felted on the whole interior surface of the lower two thirds with a compact coating of the down of flowering-grasses and little bits of spider's web. It was about 5 inches in its longest and 3½ inches in its shortest diameter. It contained three fresh eggs, which were white, very thickly speckled with brownish pink, in places confluent and having a decided tendency to form a zone near the large end. Three or four days later we shot the female at the same spot.

A similar nest and two eggs, taken in Jhansi on the 12th August, were sent me with one of the parent birds by Mr. F.R. Blewitt, and, again, another nest with four eggs was sent me from Hoshungabad.

There ought to be no doubt about these nests and eggs, the more so that I have several specimens of the bird from various parts of the North-Western Provinces and Central Provinces killed in August and September, but somehow I do not feel quite certain that we have not made some mistake. Beyond doubt the great mass of this species migrate and breed further north. I have never obtained specimens in June or July; and if these nests really, as the evidence seems to show, belonged to the birds that were shot on or near them, these latter must have bred in India before or after their migration, as well as in Northern Asia.

Though one may make minute differences, I do not think either of the three nests or sets of eggs could be certainly separated from those of Franklinia buchanani, which might well have eggs about both in April and August; and I am not prepared to say that in each of these three cases Hypolais rama, which frequents precisely the same kind of bushes that F. buchanani breeds in, may not accidentally have been shot in the immediate proximity to a nest of the latter, the owner of which had crept noiselessly away, as these birds so often do.

Dr. Jerdon says:--"I have obtained the nest and eggs of this species on one occasion only at Jaulnah in the Dekhan; the nest was cup-shaped, made of roots and grass, and contained four pure white eggs."

I do not attach undue weight to this, for Dr. Jerdon did not care about eggs, and was rather careless about them; but still his statement has to be noted, and the whole matter requires careful investigation.

Mr. Doig found this species breeding on the Eastern Narra in Sind. He writes:--"I first obtained eggs of this bird in March 1879. The first nest was found by one of my men, who afterwards showed me a bird close to the place he got the eggs, which he said was either the bird to which the nest and eggs belonged or one of the same kind. This I shot and sent to Mr. Hume with one of the eggs to identify. Some time after I again came across a lot of these birds breeding, and this time lay in wait myself for the bird to come to the nest and eggs, and when it did I shot it. This I also sent to Mr. Hume to identify. Some time after I beard from Mr. Hume, who said that there must be some mistake, as the birds sent belonged to two different species, viz. Sylvia affinis and Hypolais rama, and were both, he believed, only cold-weather visitants. This year I again 'went for' these birds and again sent specimens of birds and eggs to Mr. Hume, who informed me that the birds now sent were H. rama, and that the eggs must belong to this species soon after this Mr. Brooks saw the eggs with Mr. Hume and identified them as being those H. rama and identical with eggs he saw at home collected by, I think, Mr. Seebohm of this species in Siberia. Only fancy a bird breeding on the Narra of all places, especially in May, June, and July, in preference to Siberia! Locally they are very numerous, as I collected upwards of 90 to 100 eggs in one field about eight acres in size. They build in stunted tamarisk bushes, or rather in bushes of this kind which originally were cut down to admit of cultivation being carried on, and which afterwards had again sprouted. These bushes are very dense, and in their centre is situated the nest, composed of sedge, with a lining of fine grass, mixed sometimes with a little soft grass-reed. The eggs are, as a rule, four in number, of a dull white ground-colour with brown spots, the large end having as a rule a ring round it of most delicate, fine, hair-like brown lines, something similar to the tracing to be seen on the eggs of Drymoeca inornata. The egg in size is also similar to those of that species."

The eggs of this species vary from broad to moderately elongated ovals, but they are almost always somewhat pointed towards the small end; the shell is fine but as a rule glossless; here and there, however, an egg exhibits a faint gloss. The ground-colour is whitish, never pure white, with an excessively faint greenish, greyish, creamy, or pinky tinge. The markings are very variable in amount and extent, but they are always black or nearly so and pale inky grey; perhaps typically the markings consist of a zone of black hair-lines twisted and entangled together, in which irregular shaped spots and small blotches of the same colour appear to have been caught, which zone is underlaid and more or less surrounded by clouds, streaks, and spots of pale inky grey. This zone is typically about the large end, but in one or two eggs is near the middle of the egg and in one or two is about the small end. Outside this zone a few small specks and spots, and rarely one or two tiny blotches, of both black and grey are thinly scattered; occasionally, however, the hair-lines so characteristic of this egg are almost entirely wanting, there is no apparent zone, and the markings, spots, and specks are thinly and irregularly distributed about the entire surface; here and there the whole of the dark markings on the egg are entirely confined to the zone, elsewhere only pale lilac specks are visible. Occasionally together with a well-defined zone numerous specks, spots, and a few hair-line scratches of black are intermingled with faint purplish-grey spots, and pretty thinly scattered everywhere.

The eggs vary from 0·53 to 0·68 in length and from 0·46 to 0·51 in breadth; but the average of a very large number is 0·61 by 0·49.

402. Sylvia affinis (Blyth). The Indian Lesser White-throated Warbler.

Sylvia curruca (Gm.), apud Jerd. B.I. ii, p. 209. Sterparola curruca (Lath.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 583.

Of the nidification of the Lesser Whitethroat within our limits, I only know that it was found in May, breeding abundantly in Cashmere in the lower hills, by Mr. Brooks. He did not notice it comparatively high up; for instance at Goolmerg, which, though not above 9000 feet high, is at the base of a snowy range, he did not see it at all.

It builds a loose, rather shallow, cup-shaped nest, composed chiefly of grass, coarser on the exterior and finer interiorly, which it places in low bushes and thickets at no great elevation from the ground. The nest is more or less lined with fine grass and roots.

It lays four or sometimes five eggs.

Mr. Brooks writes:--"I found this Whitethroat tolerably numerous in Cashmere, where it appears generally distributed, occurring at from 5500 to 6500 feet elevation or thereabouts, It frequents places where there is abundance of brushwood or underwood, especially along the banks of rivers or near them.

"I found several nests, and they were all placed in small bushes, and from 4 to 6 feet above the ground. One was in a bush on a small island in the Kangan River, which runs into the Sind River; and this nest I well remember was just so high that I could not look into it as I stood. The nests precisely resembled in size and structure those of C. garrula which I have seen at home, being formed of grasses, roots, and fine fibres, and I think scantily lined with a few black horsehairs; but I forget this now. They were slight, thinly formed nests, very neat but strong, and had bits of spider's web stuck about the outside here and there. This appears to be the decoration this bird and C. garrula are partial to. They were not added, I think, for the purpose of rendering the nest inconspicuous, for there were just enough to give the nest a spotted appearance.

"The song of this species strongly resembles that of its congener, and is full, loud, and sweet. I found the nests by the song of the male, for he generally sings near the nest. The eggs don't differ from those of C. garrula in my collection."

Major Wardlaw Ramsay says, writing of Afghanistan:--"This Warbler was very common and was breeding by the 27th May. All the nests found were shallow cups, composed entirely of dried grass, and situated in small bushes, frequently juniper, about 2½ feet from the ground. The eggs vary much both in size and colour--some being long ovals, nearly pure white, spotted with pale brown towards the larger end, and others of a much rounder form and a pale greenish white, thickly spotted in a broad zone near the thicker end and smeared with very pale brown, or else spotted and smeared with olive-brown over the whole of the thicker end."

The eggs are somewhat broad ovals, typically a good deal pointed towards the lesser end. They vary, however, much both in size and shape: some are short and broad, decidedly pointed at the small end; others are more elongated, and some are almost regular ellipsoids. The eggs have little or no gloss; the ground-colour is white, with a more or less perceptible though very faint greenish tinge. Typically they are very Shrike-like in their markings, the majority of these being gathered together in a more or less dense zone near the large end. The markings consist of small spots, blotches, and specks of pale yellowish brown, more or less intermingled with spots and specks of dull inky purple or grey; in many eggs there are very few markings, and these are mere spots except in the zone, while in others full-sized markings are scattered, though thinly, more or less over the whole surface of the egg. In some the zone is confluent and blurred; in others composed of small sharply defined specks and spots. Here and there a pretty large yellowish-brown cloud may be met with partially or entirely bounded by a narrow hair-like black line. Tiny black specks now and then occur, and little zigzag lines that might have been borrowed from a Bunting's egg; but these are not met with in probably more than one out of ten eggs.

In length the eggs vary from 0·6 to 0·75, and in breadth from 0·48 to 0·55; but the average of sixteen eggs is 0·66 by 0·5.

406. Phylloscopus tytleri, Brooks. Tytler's Willow-Warbler.

Phylloscopus tytleri, Brooks, Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 560 bis.

Tytler's Willow-Warbler, as yet a rare bird in collections, and which appears only to straggle down to the plains of Upper India during the cold season, was found by Captain Cock breeding at Sonamerg (9400 feet elevation) in the Sindh Valley, Cashmere, in June.

Mr. Brooks, who discriminated the bird, said of it and its nidification:--"In plumage resembling P. viridanus, but of a richer and deeper olive; it is entirely without the 'whitish wing-bar,' which is always present in viridanus, unless in very abraded plumage. The wing is shorter, so is the tail; but the great difference is in the bill, which is much longer, darker, and of a more pointed and slender form in P. tytleri. The song and notes are utterly different, so are the localities frequented. P. viridanus is an inhabitant of brushwood ravines, at 9000 and 10,000 feet elevation; while P. tytleri is exclusively a pine-forest Phylloscopus. In the places frequented by P. viridanus, it must build on the ground, or very near it; but our new species builds, 40 feet up a pine-tree, a compact half-domed nest on the side of a branch.

"Captain Cock shot one of this species off the nest at Sonamerg with four eggs. The bird he sent to me, and gave me two of the eggs. Regarding the nest he says: 'I took a nest, containing four eggs, about 40 feet up a pine, on the outer end of a bough, by means of ropes and sticks, and I shot the female bird. I do not know what the bird is. I thought it was P. viridanus, but I send it to you. The nest was very deep, solidly built, and cup-shaped. Eggs, plain white.' In conversation with Captain Cock he afterwards told me that he had watched the bird building its nest. It was rather on the side of the branch, and its solid formation reminded him of a Goldfinch's nest. It was composed of grass, fibres, moss, and lichens externally and thickly lined with hair and feathers. The eggs were pure unspotted white, rather smaller than those of Reguloides occipitalis. Two of them measured ·58 by ·48 and ·57 by ·45. They were taken on the 4th June."

Captain Cock himself writes to me:--"Of all the birds' nests that I know of, this is one of the most difficult to find. One day in the forest at Sonamerg, Cashmere, I noticed a Warbler fly into a high pine with a feather in its bill. I watched with the glasses and saw that it was constructing a nest, so allowing a reasonable time to elapse (nine days or so) I went and took the nest. It was placed on the outer end of a bough, about 40 feet up a high pine, and I had to take the nest by means of a spar lashed at right angles to the tree, the outer extremity of which was supported by a rope fastened to the top of the pine. The nest was a very solid, deep cup, of grass, fibres, and lichens externally, and lined with hair and feathers. It contained four white eggs, measuring 0·58 by 0·48.