1922.] the Birds of Sind. ()2;') 



Siphia parva parva (Bechst.). 



In Lower Sind the chief status of the Red-breasted Fly- 

 catcher is that of a passage migrant ; a few may over- 

 winter, though the only winter specimen I saw was a single 

 bird at Jamrao Head on the Narra Canal early in December. 

 Hume recorded several near Sukkur on 30 December, the 

 only time he met with it. Its times of passage are most 

 marked ; it arrives in autumn at the end of the first week, in 

 October and, never very common, single scattered birds may 

 be met with in favourite haunts till mid-November; it 

 repasses again quite regularly from the last week in March 

 to the end of the second week in April (latest seen 17 April), 

 and is commoner on this passage than in autumn, Butler 

 too, found it common on spring passage in March and April 

 at Hyderabad. It is not a conspicuous bird and one must 

 know where to look for it; it is invariably found in shady places 

 such as a line of well-grown " babools '' or " peepuls " in 

 cultivation, ; in the desert I never met with it. It feeds in 

 true flycatcher style, seldom going down to the ground as 

 the Pied Flycatcher does, and its habit of flirting its tail up 

 in Chat fashion and the Avhite in the tail are conspicuous 

 characters. It is curious that it should be rare in Sind in 

 winter, as it is fairly common in the Punjab at that time. 



All Sind sj)ecimens are typical parva. Examination of a 

 considerable series of Indian birds leads me to differ some- 

 what from the account of the plumages given by Mr. AVith- 

 erby (Pract. Hdbk. p. 296) in that the female in spring may, 

 though not always, have some red on the chin and throat : 

 thus one adult (26 March) has chin and throat as rich as an 

 adult ma](^ (but the ear-coverts are brown) ; another adult 

 (12 April) and one bird of the previous year (20 March) 

 have these parts pale rusty red. I have never seen a female 

 in winter with any red on the throat, so presumably it is 

 acquired at the spring moult, which involves chin, throat, 

 ear-coverts, and part of the crown, though all these parts are 

 not moulted in every case. The males of the previous 

 year in spring vary very much in the amount of red on the 



