COPSYCHUS. 81 



far the majority of eggs are to be found alike in hills and plains 

 during the latter half of April and May. So far as my experience 

 goes, and I have taken scores, the nests are invariably placed in 

 holes in trees, banks, or walls, or under the eaves of huts. I have 

 never seen or personally heard of a well-attested instance of their 

 breeding in bushes ; but it is still pretty certain, from what 

 Captain Eearan and others have recorded, that they do, at any 

 rate occasionally, nest in such situations. 



In the plains the nest is generally composed of roots, grass, 

 fibres, and feathers ; but in the hills moss and lichens are largely 

 used. In shape the nest is typically a broad, very shallow, loosely 

 built saucer, some 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and with a central 

 depression about an inch in depth ; but they vary much, according 

 to the shape and size of the cavity in which they are placed. Some 

 are more regularly cup-shaped, while many are mere pads. A few 

 small twigs, or a few dead leaves, may at times be found doing duty 

 as a foundation ; but whether placed there by the bird, or deposited 

 by the wind anterior to the construction of the nest, may be 

 doubtful. Five is unquestionably the full complement of eggs, 

 although once or twice I have taken four partially incubated 

 ones. 



Captain Unwin says : " A nest that I found in a hole in a tree 

 about 4 feet from the ground in the Agrore Yalley, on 18th May, 

 1870, contained four fresh eggs. It was a moderately large 

 saucer, about 4| inches in diameter and nearly 2 inches thick, 

 composed externally of rather coarse grass, and the shallow egg- 

 depression lined with finer grass and grass-roots." 



Colonel Gr. H. T. Marshall records that this species " breeds 

 freely at low elevations all round Murree." 



I have found it breeding in the Sutlej Yalley below Kotegurh, 

 and near Solon below Kussowlee. 



Captain Hutton says : " Copsychus saularis arrives in the hills 

 up to about 5500 feet in the beginning of April, returning to the 

 Dehra Dhoon early in the autumn. In the Dhoon it breeds in 

 May and June, constructing a shallow nest of fine woody flower- 

 stalks, intermixed with fine roots and the dry tendrils of climbing 

 plants, with a little moss externally, and placed within a hole in 

 some large tree, or in a bank or wall, where it lays five eggs of a 

 pale bluish green, thickly spotted and blotched with purplish 

 brown, and showing an imperfect ring of nearly confluent blotches 

 at the larger end. There is, however, great variety both in the 

 number and size of spots and in intensity of colouring, some being 

 blotched as well as spotted, others being simply and uniformly 

 freckled with rufous brown without any indication of a ring at the 

 larger end, and in these the size is somewhat less. Having obtained 

 five or six of these typical nests, and shot the old birds for exami- 

 nation, there can be no doubt about the correctness of the foregoing 

 remarks ; yet at the same time I am still fully convinced that the 

 nest with white eggs formerly noticed (Journal Asiatic Society 

 Bengal) as having been taken from a hole in a bank was a mere 



TOL. II. 6 



