162 PMNGILLIDiE. 



777. Passer pyrrhonotus, Blytli. The llufous-haclcal Sparrow. 

 Passer pyrrlionotus, BL, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 365 ; Hume, Cat. no. 709. 



Mr. Scrope Doig writes to me : — " I send three eggs of Passer 

 pyrrhonotus taken on 24tli April, 1881 ; nest a loose straggling 

 kind of structure of grass and feathers, generally situated close to 

 water in acacia trees : normal iiumber of t^ggs three. The three 

 herewith sent represent the diiferent tj^pes I ha^■e taken up to the 

 present. The birds are just beginning to build, and are very far 

 from being rare." 



He elsewhere remarks: — "25th August. "While beating some 

 tamarisk bushes in the middle of a swamp for A. stentoreus, I shot 

 a bird I did not recognize, and which I had noticed fly past me 

 tv^o or three times towards some small acacia trees growing in the 

 water. On going to these trees I found three nests exactly similar 

 to nests of P. domesticus, only rather smaller, placed in the top- 

 most branches, and about 12 feet over water-line. All the nests 

 had young ones more or less fully fledged." 



The eggs vary a gi'eat deal in markings, as do those of all the 

 Sparrows ; but they are regular Sparrows' eggs, all the varieties of 

 which could be exactly matched by eggs of the Common Sparrow, 

 except, indeed, as regards size, for they are markedly smaller. 

 There are three very marked types and a dozen intermediate sub- 

 types ; one has a clear greenish-white ground, and is profusely 

 blotched in a zone round the large end with brownish olive, 

 blotches of the same colour being sparsely scattered over the rest 

 of the surface of the egg ; the second has a creamy-fawn coloured 

 ground, densely but finely freckled all over with sepia-grey ; the 

 third has a greyish-white ground, very little of which is visible, 

 and then chiefly on the smaller half of the egg, densely mottled 

 and striated with blackish brown, which all about the larger end of 

 the egg forms a confluent mottled cap. 



Three eggs measure from 0'68 to 0*7 in length, and from 0*5 to 

 0-51 in breadth. 



779. Passer montanus (Linn.). 2'he Tree-Sparrow. 



Passer montanus {Linn.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 366; Hume, Itom/h 

 Draft N. ^- E. no. 710. 



I know little of the nidificalion of this, the Tree-Sparrow of 

 European writers, except in British Sikliim, where it appears at 

 elevations of from '3000 to 7000 feet during the summer, and 

 where it breeds about all human habitations during the spring and 

 summer, making a nest precisely similar to that of the Cinnamon 

 Tree-Sparrow, and laying from four to six eggs. I have ascertained 

 that these Sparrows rear at least t\^'0 broods during the summer. 

 In Burma the bird breeds we know, and throughout the Himalayas 

 east of Nepal ; but though it occurs as far west as Chini in the 

 Sutlej Valley, I have not heard of its breeding west of Nepal. 



