NiiJification of Indian Birds. 223 



under ]^ inches. The inner portion is made of very fine 

 twigs and coarse grass-stems, more or less mixed M'ith moss- 

 roots and fine tendrils of convolvuli and other creepers, 

 and sometimes with stalks of the common maiden-hair fern. 

 The whole of this is bound together, and also more or less 

 interwoven, with soft grasses, dead scraps of moss, and a 

 material which appears to he the inner b;irk of some tree. 

 Further strength is added by means of cobwebs, a very large 

 amount of this material being used in a few nests. The 

 nest, when not in an upright fork, is very firmly fixed, 

 although not much of the material of which the nest is com- 

 posed is actually wound round the supporting twigs. I liave 

 seen one or two nests with a little live moss incorporated 

 with the other materials, giving to then an appearance much 

 like small neat nests of Ht/psij)etes psaroides. The eggs, 

 which are usually two in number, sometimes three, vary in 

 ground-colour from a pale pink, so faint as to appear white, 

 to a rather warm pink, though eggs at all deeply tinted are 

 the exception. Most eggs are marked with small specks and 

 spots of a deep reddish brown, and also with irregular lines 

 and streaks of the same colour, often so dark as to appear 

 black if only casually examined. In most eggs the specks 

 and spots appear to be the predominating form of markings, 

 hut in others the lines predominate, and in one egg I pos- 

 sessed nearly all the markings were of this character. What- 

 ever they may be, however, they are not numerous, and are 

 mostly confined to the larger end, where they often form a 

 zone. Another type of egg has all the marks, of whichever 

 kind, blurred and fainter, looking as though some one had 

 tried to Avash the egg and, by so doing, caused the colour of 

 the markings to become paler and, at the same time, to run, 

 giving the e^^ a mottled surface, not unlike a weakly-marked 

 egg of Criniger jlaveoJus. 



Most eggs are long in shape : some very regular ovals, and 

 others decidedly pointed. The shell is close-grained, smooth, 

 and delicate, and in the majority of cases shows a faint gloss, 

 seldom at all pronounced. Fifteen eggs taken in North 

 Cachar average 0"'94 x G"'65, but deducting the three largest. 



