MYIAGRIN.E. 453 



It occurs in the South, both in thin forest, and in groves, avenues, 

 and gardens, in well-wooded districts ; but is not so common in the 

 Carnatic, as in the Deccan, where it may be seen in every clump of 

 trees. In its habits it is very active and restless, continually 

 flitting about from branch to branch, snappuig up an insect on the 

 wing, and raising its outspread tail and lowering its wings when 

 it re-seats itself. It hardly ever flies more than a few feet after an 

 insect, and seldom returns to the same perch, traversing in 

 succession most of the branches of the tree, and rarely resting 

 even during the heat of the day. It is usually solitary, occasion- 

 ally two or three in company. I have several times seen it 

 alight on the ground, and sometimes on tlie back of a cow, and 

 pursuing flies from this rather unusual perch. Its chief food is 

 mosquitoes and other small dipterous insects, also the small 

 cicadellaj that are so abundant on every tree in India. It has a 

 pleasing little song, which it warbles forth every now and then, 

 consisting of several notes, following one another in a regular 

 descending scale. I have had the nest brought me, very neatly 

 made with fine roots lined with hair, deeply cup-shaped, and fixed in 

 the fork of a bamboo. The eggs were white, with some rather 

 large reddish-brown spots. 



A very closely allied race or species exists in Ceylon, L. 

 compressirostris, Blyth, which differs in the bill being not de- 

 pressed but compressed, and in the white on the tail-feathers being- 

 less in extent. Another, slightly diflcring, exists in a new species 

 from Upper Pegu. 



293. Leucocerca pectoralis, Jerdon. 



J. A. S., XII., 935— Jerdon, Cat. lU (in part)— Jerdon, III. 

 Ind. Orn., letter-press to pi. 2— Blytii, Cat. 1243. • 



The White-spotted Fantail. 



2)escr.— Above, the whole head black, with a narrow white 

 superciliuni ; the rest of the upper plumage brownish-dusky ; wings 

 dusky, the covers very slightly tipped with albescent ; tail dusky. 



