BUIPIDUHA. 35 



intensity of colour, often more or less confluent or connected 

 together by a dull haze of the same shade, and at times inter- 

 mingled with spots or tiny clouds of very faint inky purple. The 

 upper end of the egg inside of the zone is commonly thinly 

 speckled with spots similar to those composing it. The lower 

 portion of the egg below the zone is as often as not spotless ; in 

 other cases it is very thinly speckled like the space inside the zone. 

 In some eggs the markings are absolutely confined to the zone. 

 The eggs are not unlike those of Culicicapa rinereicapilla, which, 

 however, are smaller ; but they are always more feebly marked 

 than these. In length they vary from 0*6 to O76 inch, and in 

 breadth from 0*48 to 0*55 inch ; but the average of thirty eggs 

 measured is 0*6(5 by 0-51 inch. 



605. Rhipidura albicollis (Vieill.). The White-throated 

 Fantail Flycatcher. 



Leucocerca fuscoventris (Frankl.}, Jerd. B. 2nd. i, p. 451 ; Hume, 

 Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 291. 



The White-throated Fantail Flycatcher breeds in the wooded Sub- 

 Himalayan tracts and all the warmer valleys of the outer Hima- 

 Inyan ranges (up to an elevation of 4000 or 5000 feet) from 

 Debrooghur to Murree, in Eastern and Lower Bengal, and in the 

 forest districts of Central India, in Eaipoor and the Tributary 

 Mehals, and doubtless throughout Burma. 



It lays in May, June, and the early part of July. The nests of 

 this species are typically solid, and compactly built, inverted cones, 

 placed usually in some slender upright fork, which is completely 

 imbedded in the structure of the lower part of the nest ; the nests 

 are externally from 3'5 to 4 inches in depth, and from 2'5 to 2*75 

 in their greatest diameter; they are not, as a rule, true cones, as 

 they generally continue for some distance nearly of the same size, 

 and are then contracted rather rapidly ; the rim of the nest is 

 often a good deal higher on one side than on the other; the egg- 

 cavity is about 1'75 inch in diameter, and is from 0*75 to 1*5 inch 

 in depth ; the nest is composed of grass-stems, and pieces of dry 

 blades of grass, with here and there pieces of woody and other 

 vegetable fibre, and entirely coated with cobwebs ; there is a 

 pretence for lining the cavity with a few fine grass-roots. Occa- 

 sionally, but rarely, the nests are simply more or less shallow 

 cups, exactly resembling those of Rhipidura albifrontata. The 

 eggs are three in number. 



Blyth, in Jardiue's ' Contributions to Ornithology,' writes: 

 " The nest of L. fuscoventris is affixed, sometimes to a small stem of 

 bamboo as represented by our figure in the background, and some- 

 times placed as represented in our principal figure. It is con- 

 structed of, and lined with, fine grass-stems, bound round on the 

 outside with some fiat leaves of grass, which are more or less 

 completely covered over with spider's web ; and there is alwavs a 



3* 



