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GARRULAX. 147 
Nidification. As with so many of the common birds, the 
breeding season of this Laughing-Thrush is very extended, eggs 
being laid from the end of March to the beginning of August, the 
latter being second broods. They breed from practically the level 
of the plains up to 5,000 feet, but between 1,000 and 2,500 feet is 
the favourite altitude. The nests are broad, but shallow, cups, 
rather loosely put together and are generally composed for the 
main part of grass and bamboo leaves, bound together with stems 
of plants, tendrils, roots and fern-rachides and mixed more or less 
with dead leaves, dried moss, etc. The lining is of coarse roots, 
fern-rachides and tendrils. They may be placed in almost any 
position from low down in scrub and brambles to 20 feet up in 
small saplings, but a common site is some thorny, and not too 
dense, bush in hight undergrowth. 
Fig. 28.—Head of G. /. /eucolophus. 
The eggs number from three to five, two or six only very rarely. 
They are a pure china-white in colour, hard and glossy with 
numerous pits, a feature shown in no other egg of this family. In 
shape they are very spherical, and but for their stoutness and the 
pits might easily be mistaken for Kingfishers’ eggs. 200 eggs 
average 281 x 22°8 mm., and the extremes in length and breadth 
are 30°0 x 23:4 mm., 28:7 x 24:1 mm. and 25:0 x 21:0 mm. 
Habits. The White-crested Laughing-Thrush is extremely 
abundant in the lower hills in the North and South of the Brahma- 
putra. It is one of the noisiest of birds, always calling to one 
another in notes of varying degrees of harshness, the big flocks in 
which it congregates every few minutes indulging in an outburst 
of cackling and laughing calls in which each member tries to out- 
shout the rest. These outbursts are often accompanied by 
dancing and flapping of wings as the birds clamber about the 
undergrowth or work along the ground underneath. They are 
not shy birds, and if one keeps quiet they show far more interest 
in each other and in their food than they do in the intruder. 
Moreover, they are most inquisitive birds and must investigate 
carefully everything they cannot understand. They may be found 
in flocks even in the breeding season, and a bird seated on her 
L2 
