320 Mr. E. C. Stuart Baker on the . 



diameter by something under 2" in depth. The inner cup 

 may measure about 3" by 1"'2 or less. 



The materials consist o£ fine but strong grass-stems 

 internally, these being wound round and rounds but not 

 much interlaced or twisted into the outer part^ which is made 

 of stems of herbaceous plants, tough but slender twigs, and 

 coarse grasses, the whole liberally besprinkled with cobwebs, 

 spiders'-nests, and lichen, the last usually greatly prepon- 

 derating over all the rest. 



The nest is generally, but not always, placed at a con- 

 siderable height from the ground, and the site selected by 

 the birds is a fork, either upright or horizontal, perhaps most 

 often the latter, towards the summit or outermost branches 

 of the tree. It seems always to be very strongly attached to 

 the supporting twigs, these often being entirely covered with 

 the materials of which it is made, or, at other times, very 

 firmly wound round and about with the tenacious yellow 

 cobwebs of a large black-aud-yellow spider, which is unplea- 

 santly common in all the south-eastern hills below the 

 Himalayas, 



Typically the eggs of the Eastern Grey Drongo are of a 

 deep, warm cream-colour, with rather numerous blotches of 

 red and reddish brown, with others underlying them of pale 

 neutral tint or lavender-grey. This type may be matched with 

 a few clutches of eggs either of D. ater or D. longicaudatus, 

 but they are much more warmly tinted than the average 

 eggs of either of these birds. 



The next most common form of egg has the ground white 

 or very nearly so, and the markings, which are smaller and 

 more sharply defined than in the last-described sort, are 

 of a deep purple-brown, with others of the same colour, but 

 much paler, looking as if they had been nearly washed out. 

 In the majority of eggs of this latter type the markings will 

 be found to be most numerous in a broad irregular ring at 

 the larger end and rather scarce elsewhere ; in other eggs 

 they are scattered about the whole surface, though generally 

 less plentifully at the small end than at the large. I have 

 seen no pure white eggs of this species. 



