TEPHHODOKNIS. 333 



horizontal fork of a branch, and are composed of vegetable fibre 

 and fine grass-roots, thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by 

 which also they are fixed on to branches, and lined internally with 

 silky vegetable down or fibre. Externally their colour always 

 approximates closely to the bark of the branch on which they are 

 placed ; they are not thin basket-like structures like those of 

 dEyithina or Rhipidura, but are fully | inch thick at the sides and 

 probably | inch thick at the bottom. 



Colonel G. F. L. Marshall writes : "The Common Wood-Shrike 

 builds in the Saharunpoor district in the latter half of March, the 

 young being hatched early in April. The bird is common ; but 

 owing to the small size and bark-like colour of its nest, the latter 

 is very difficult to find. On the 8th April I fired at a specimen 

 and missed it ; it then flew off and settled in a fork of another 

 tree about 30 feet from the ground. On looking carefully with an 

 opera-glass, I found that it was sitting on its nest. I drove it off 

 and shot it. The nest was very small and shallow, cup-shaped, and 

 wedged in between two small boughs at their junction, and not 

 appearing either above or below. The egg-receptacle was 2^ inches 

 in diameter. The nest was made of grass and bits of bark, beautifully 

 woven together and bound with cobwebs, and exactly resembling 

 the boughs between which it was placed, or, I might say, wedged 

 in. The eggs, four in number, were slightly set ; they were small 

 for the bird, and of a rather round oval shape ; the colour was a 

 creamy-yellow ground, thickly spotted and blotched with the dif- 

 ferent shades of brown and sienna, the bulk of the spots tending 

 to form a zone near the thick end, as in the typical form of the eggs 

 of the Laniidce, and a number of faint purple blotches underlying 

 the zone." 



Major C. T. Bingham says : " I have only found three nests of 

 this bird, and these at Delhi. At Allahabad it was not very common. 

 It is a difficult nest to find, being generally well hidden in the 

 forks of leafy trees. All three nests I got were of one type shallow 

 saucers, made of vegetable fibre matted together into a soft felt- 

 like substance. In two of the nests I found three and in the third 

 one egg. These are thickly spotted and blotched with brown and a 

 washed-out purple, on a pale greyish-yellow ground. The average 

 measurements of the seven eggs are length O77, breadth 0-61." 



Colonel E. A. Butler writes from Sind : 



"Hyderabad^ I9th April, 1878. Noticed two young birds scarcely 

 able to fly ; fresh eggs were laid, therefore, about the beginning of 

 March. On the 20th April near the same place I found a nest 

 containing young birds. It consisted of a neat little cup composed 

 of dry grass smeared all over exteriorly with cobwebs, and fixed in 

 a fork of one of the outer branches of a large babool-tree about 

 10 feet from the ground. The nest was very small for the size of 

 the bird, and had I not seen the old bird on it I should have 

 taken it for a nest of Rhipidura albifrontata.'' 



The late Captain Beavan remarked that this bird " appears to 

 come to the Maunbhoom District for the purpose of breeding. I 



