Mr. A. Iluino on Indian Ornithology. 11 



of Bareilly. Here the trees are but puny representatives of their 

 giant race ; but even then, straight and well shaped, with large 

 brilliantly glossy green leaves, they catch the eye at once and 

 fix it pleasantly. In one of these a common Bulbul, Pycnonotus 

 pusillus, had made its home. 



The nest was a compact and rather massive one, built at a 

 fork, on and round a small twig ; externally it was composed of 

 the stems (with the dry leaves and flowers still on them) of a 

 tiny groundsel- {Senecio-) like asteraeeous plant, among which 

 were mingled a number of quite dead and skeleton leaves and a 

 few blades of dry grass. Inside, rather coarse grass was tightly 

 woven into a lining to the cavity, which was deep, being about 

 2 inches in depth by 3 in diameter. This is the common form 

 of nest ; but half an hour later, and scarcely a hundred yards 

 distant, we took another nest of this same species, which was 

 beautifully built in a mango towards the end of one of the 

 branches, where it divided into four upright twigs, between 

 which the Bulbul had firmly planted her dwelling. Exter- 

 nally it was as usual, chiefly composed of the withered stems 

 of the little asteraeeous plant, interwoven with a few shoots 

 of Tamarix diceca and a little tow-like fibre of the putsan 

 {Hibiscus cannahinus), while a good deal of cobweb was applied 

 externally here and there. The inside was lined with exceed- 

 ingly fine stems of some herbaceous exogenous plant; and there 

 did not appear to be a single dead leaf or a single particle of 

 grass in the whole nest. The eggs, however, in both nests, 

 three in each, closely resembled each other, being of a delicate 

 pink ground, with reddish-brown and purplish-grey spots and 

 blotches almost equally distributed over the whole surface of 

 the egg, the reddish-brown in places becoming almost maroon - 

 red. Two eggs, however, that we took out of a nest similar to 

 the first in structure, but situated, like the second, in a mango, 

 were of a somewhat different character and very different in 

 tint. The ground was dingy reddish-pink, and the whole of 

 the egg was thickly mottled all over with very deep blood-red, 

 the mottlings being so thick at the larger end as to form an 

 almost perfectly confluent cap. Altogether the colouring of 

 these two eggs {si licet minores) reminded one of richly-coloured 

 examples of that of Neophron percnopterus. 



