56 PICID.E. 



transverse bars, which sometimes disappear completely on the 

 back, and are very narrow on the tail-feathers ; lower surface 

 rather duller in colour than the back, and without black bars 

 except occasionally on the flanks, thigh- and under tail-coverts. 



In females there is no red below the eye. The young generally 

 have crescentic black or dusky marks on the underparts. 



Bill very dark brown, plumbeous at the base of the lower 

 mandible ; irides brown, eyelids plumbeous ; legs and feet greyish 

 brown (Oates). 



Length 10 ; tail 3 ; wing 5 ; tarsus -95 ; bill from gape 1*25. 



Fig. IG.— Head oi M. jphaoceps. 



Distrihution. The forests at and near the base of the Himalayas 

 as far west as Dehra Dun ; the greater part of Bengal and parts 

 of the forest-region between the Ganges and Godavari, east of the 

 meridian of 80^ or 82° * ; Assam, Cachar, Manipur, and Burma as 

 far south as Moulmein ; also Siam, Cambodia, and Cochin China. 



Habits, Sfc. A quiet bird, generally silent but far from shy, and 

 where common, as in parts of Burma, found in both evergreen 

 and deciduous forest, in bamboo-jungle, and occasionally in culti- 

 vation. It feeds chiefly on the ants t that form nests in trees, and 

 has been several times found by Mr. Gammie in Sikhim, and by 

 Major Bingham in Tenasserim, to make a hole in the middle of 

 one of these ants' nests, and to lay its eggs in a cup-shaped cavity 

 in the middle. The eggs, generally three in number, are laid in 

 April and May : they are thin, fragile, without gloss, and measure 

 about 1-16 by •!. The ants' nests are well known ; they are a foot 

 or more in diameter, and are composed of the leaves and twigs of 

 the tree cemented together by a felt-like substance. 



* Barnes in the ' .Birds of Bombay' includes M. -phceoceps, because according 

 to Jerdon it is tbuud in some of the forests of Central India. The mistake 

 has been repeatedly made of supposing that Jerdon, by the words ' Central 

 India,' meant the region so-called at the present day, whereas in the Introduc- 

 tion to the ' Birds of India,' p. xl, he defined the area, which as understood by 

 him comprised Chutia Kngpur and the forest-tracts extending southward to 

 Bastar. M. jihaocej^is is not known to occur anywhere within 300 miles of the 

 Bombay Preijidency. 



t Species of Cremastogaster , Jour. Bombay N. H. Sec. fii, p. 198. 



