Birds of North-ivest Fohkien. 407 



remained for some seconds quietly drinking some water that 

 had accumulated there^ then flirted its tail about and finally 

 flew down into the valley. 



The soft parts of this species are: — Iris dull dark crimson ; 

 bill dark livid pinkish brown ; legs dull orange ; feet tinged 

 with brown. 



Like S. castaneiceps (see Ibis^ 1895, p. 219), this bird 

 builds its nest in holes of earthbanks by the mountain-paths, 

 hollows in the ground on a bamboo-planted hillside being 

 also favourite situations. 



Nests were reported to us as being built early in April, and 

 on the 14th April I examined three of them in the forest. 

 All three were in holes in the bank by the path. Two were 

 empty as yet, while the third contained three eggs. The 

 parent birds of the third nest were near with nesting-materials, 

 and the hunters told me that the birds kept adding to their 

 nests until the full clutch was laid. On the 17th April I 

 took a nest, with five eggs much incubated, from a hole in 

 a bank on a hillside sparsely planted with bamboos. 



About eighteen nests were collected during our stay, the 

 last, taken on the 19tli May, containing fresh eggs. From 

 the 14th April, however, to the above date, the degree of 

 incubation of the eggs taken varied greatly, fresh and incu- 

 bated eggs being often found on the same day. The nest 

 consists of a more or less stiff" cup, composed of very soft 

 fibre, fine grass-stems or fine grass-roots, lined with coir, 

 very fine curly black fibre or moss-roots, built within a rough 

 outer cup of moss, pine-needles, bamboo-leaves, &c., which 

 more or less fills up the cavity sheltering the nest, and which 

 is therefore of rather irregular shape and size, according 

 to the space to be filled up. The depth of the inner cup is 

 1^ inch, sometimes a little over, seldom less, its diameter 

 varying from 2 to 2^ inches. A common diameter for nests 

 that are not quite round is 2\ X 2^ inches. 



The full clutch consists of five eggs, but once a nest with 

 six eggs was brought to me. The colour is a bluish china 

 white, more or less thickly speckled or finely spotted with 

 sepia-brown of several shades over light and dark grey 



