Part 88

My friend Mr. Benjamin Aitken furnishes me with the following interesting note:--"You say that the Indian Grey Shrike lays from February to July. Now, in Berar, where this bird is very common, I have found their eggs frequently in the first week of January, and on not only to July, but to September; and I once found a nest in October. I was never able to satisfy myself that the same pair had two broods in the year, but I scarcely think there can be any doubt about the matter. I once found, like your correspondent Mr. Blewitt, four nests in a small babool tree, and only one of them occupied. This was at Poona. My brother first pointed out to me that this species affects the dusty barren plain, whereas L. erythronotus prefers the cool and shaded country. This difference in the habits of the two birds is very observable at Poona, where both species are exceedingly common. Where a jungly or watered piece of country borders upon the open plain, you may see half a dozen of each kind within an area of half a mile radius, and yet never find the one trespassing upon the domain of the other. When you say you have never found a nest more than 1500 feet above the level of the sea, I would remind you that although L. lahtora never ascends the hills, it is yet very abundant in the Deccan, which is 2000 feet above the sea-level.

"I think I have written to you before that during a residence of twelve years I never saw L. lahtora in Bombay."

This Shrike is, however, essentially a plains bird, and never seems to ascend the Himalayas to any elevation. I have never myself found a nest more 1500 feet above the level of the sea.

Typically, the eggs are of a broad oval shape, more or less pointed towards one end, of a delicate greenish-white ground, pretty thickly blotched and spotted with various shades of brown and purple markings, which, always most numerous towards the large end, exhibit a strong tendency to form there an ill-defined zone or irregular mottled cap. The variations, however, in shape, size, colour, extent, and intensity of markings are very great; and yet, in the huge series before me, there is not one that an oologist would not at once unhesitatingly set down as a Shrike's. In some the ground-colour is a delicate pale sea-green. In some it is pale stone-colour; in others creamy, and in a few it has almost a pink tinge. The markings, commonly somewhat dull and ill-defined, are occasionally bold and bright; and in colour they vary through every shade of yellowish, reddish, olive, and purplish brown, while subsurface-looking pale purple clouds are intermingled with the darker and more defined markings. In one egg the markings may be almost exclusively confined to a broad, very irregular zone of bold blotches near the large end. In others the whole surface is more or less thickly clotted with blotches and spots, so closely crowded towards the large end as almost wholly to obscure the ground-colour there. As a rule, the markings are irregular blotches of greater or less extent, but occasionally these blotches form the exceptions, and the majority of the markings are mere spots and specks. In some eggs the purple cloudings greatly predominate; in others scarcely a trace of them is observable. Some eggs are comparatively long and narrow, while some are pyriform and blunt at both ends; and yet, notwithstanding all these great differences, there is a strong family likeness between all the eggs. In size they are, I think, somewhat smaller than those of L. excubitor. They vary in length from 0·9 to 1·17 inch, and in width from 0·75 to 0·83 inch; but the average of more than fifty eggs is 1·03 by 0·79 inch.

473. Lanius vittatus. The Bay-backed Shrike.

Lanius hardwickii (Vigors), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 405. Lanius vittatus, Dum., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 260.

The Bay-backed Shrike breeds throughout the plains of India and in the Sub-Himalayan Ranges up to an elevation of fully 4000 feet.

The laying-season lasts from April to September, but the great majority of eggs are found during the latter half of June and July; in fact, according to my experience, the great body of the birds do not lay until the rains set in.

The nests are placed indifferently on all kinds of trees (I have notes of finding them on mango, plum, orange, tamarind, toon, &c.), never at any great elevation from the ground, and usually in small trees, be the kind chosen what it may. Sometimes a high hedgerow, such as our great Customs hedge, is chosen, and occasionally a solitary caper or stunted acacia-bush.

The nests (almost invariably fixed in forks of slender boughs) are neat, compactly and solidly built cups, the cavities being deep and rather more than hemispherical, from 2·25 to fully 3·5 inches in diameter, and from 1·5 to 2 inches in depth. The nest-walls vary from 0·5 to 1·25 inch in thickness. The composition of the nest is various. The following are brief descriptions which I have noted from time to time:--

"Compactly woven of grass-stems and a few fine twigs, but with more or less wool, rag, cotton, or feathers incorporated; there is no lining.

"The nest was rather massive, externally composed of wool, rags, cotton, thread, and feathers, and a little grass; the cavity rather neatly lined with fine grass.

"Composed almost entirely of cobweb, with a few soft feathers, wool, string, rags, and a few pieces of very fine twigs compactly woven. The interior was lined with fine straw and fibrous roots."

Elsewhere I have recorded the following note on the nidification of this species:--

"This bird, or rather birds of this species, have been laying ever since the middle of April, but nests were then few and far between, and now in July they are common enough. The nest that we had just found was precisely like twenty others that we had found during the past two months. Rather deep, with a nearly hemispherical cavity; very compactly and firmly woven of fine grass, rags, feathers, soft twine, wool, and a few fine twigs, the whole entwined exteriorly with lots of cobwebs; and the interior cavity about 1¾ inch deep by 2¼ in diameter, neatly lined with very fine grass, one or two horsehairs, shreds of string, and one or two soft feathers. The walls were a good inch in thickness. The nest was placed in a fork of a thorny jujube or ber tree (Zizyphus jujuba), near the centre of the tree, and some 15 feet from the ground. It contained four fresh eggs, feebly coloured miniatures of the eggs of L. lahtora, which latter so closely resemble those of L. excubitor that if you mixed the eggs, you could never, I think, certainly separate them again. The eggs exhibit the zone so characteristic of those of all Shrikes. They have a dull pale ground, not white, and yet it is difficult to say what colour it is that tinges it; in these four eggs it is a yellowish stone-colour, but in others it is greenish, and in some grey; near the middle, towards the large end, there is a broad and conspicuous, but broken and irregular zone of feeble, more or less confluent spots and small blotches of pale yellowish brown and very pale washed-out purple. There are a few faint specks and spots of the same colour here and there about the rest of the egg. In some eggs previously obtained the zone is quite in the middle, and in others close round the large end. In some the colours of the markings are clear and bright, in others they are as faint and feeble as one of our modern Manchester warranted-fast-coloured muslins, after its third visit to a native washerman. In size, too, the eggs vary a good deal.

"The little Shrike had a great mind to fight for his penates, and twice made a vehement demonstration of attack; but his heart failed him, and he retreated to a neighbouring mango branch, whence a few minutes after we saw him making short dashes after his insect prey, apparently oblivious of the domestic calamity that had so recently befallen him."

Mr. F.R. Blewitt, then at Gurhi Hursroo, near Delhi, sent me some years ago the following interesting note:--

"Breeds from March to at least the middle of August. It builds its nest in low trees and high hedgerows, preferring the former.

"In shape the nest is circular, with a diameter, outside, of from 5½ to 6½ inches, and from 1·5 to 2 in thickness.

"For the exterior framework thorny twigs, old rags, hemp, thread-pieces, and coarse grass are more or less used, and compactly worked together. The egg-cavity is deep and cup-shaped, lined with fine grass and khus; pieces of rag or cotton are sometimes worked up with the former.

"Five to six is the regular number of eggs. In colour they are a light greenish white, with blotches and spots generally of a light, but sometimes of a darker, reddish brown. The spots and blotches vary much in size, and they are mostly confined to the broad end of the eggs.

"I had frequently noticed on a tree in the garden an old Shrike's nest. It was in the beginning of May that a male bird suddenly made his appearance and established himself in the garden, and morning and evening without fail did he sit and alternately chatter and warble away for hours. His perfect imitation of the notes of other birds was remarkable.

"In the beginning of June his singing suddenly ceased, the secret of which I soon discovered. He had secured a mate, and daily did I watch for the nest, which I thought they would prepare. Late on the evening of the 23rd June, happening to look up at the old nest, to my surprise I found it occupied by the female, the male the while sitting on a branch near her. Next morning on searching the nest I found four eggs. Whether this nest was prepared the year previous by these birds or by another pair I cannot tell.

"That day, the day of the robbery, the female disappeared. The male followed next day, but only to return after two or three days and recommence with renewed energy his chattering and warbling. This he continued daily till near the end of July, when, as before, he suddenly ceased to sing. I then found that he had again secured a mate, whether the old female or a new bride I am not certain; they soon set about making a nest on a neighbouring tree, very cunningly, as I thought, selected; and now the young birds reared are nearly full-fledged. An old nest, evidently of last year's make, was brought me the other day with five eggs, but the lining, as by the way was done in the one in the garden, had been wholly removed and new grass and khus substituted."

Major C.T. Bingham writes:--"Breeds both at Allahabad and at Delhi in May, June, and July. At the former place I never got the eggs, but have seen some that were taken; but at Delhi I found numbers of their nests in June and July, and one in May. It makes a much softer nest than either of the two above-mentioned Shrikes. One nest I took on the 15th June was composed wholly of tow, but generally they have an outer foundation of twigs, and are lined with tow, bits of cotton, human hair, or rags. Some eggs are a yellow-white, with very faint marks, others are miniatures of the eggs of L. lahtora.

"Five is the greatest number I have found in one nest."

Mr. W. Theobald makes the following note of this bird's breeding in the neighbourhood of Pind Dadan Khan and Katas in the Salt Range:--

"Lays from the commencement of May to the middle of June. Eggs three or four in number; shape varies from ovato-pyriform to blunt ovato-pyriform, and measuring from 0·73 to 0·87 inch in length and from 0·55 to 0·65 inch in breadth. Colour, same as L. erythronotus, also creamy or yellowish white, spotted with darker. Nest compact, in forks of thorny trees; outside fibrous stalks, bound with silk or spider-web, and covered with lichens or cocoons, imitating a weathered structure; inside lined with fine grass and vegetable down."