PIPEISOMA. 277 



by Capt. C. H. T. Marshall, are very similar to those of D. con- 

 color, but somewhat smaller. They are rather elongated ovals, 

 pure white and glossless, and they vary in length from 0*54 to 

 0-62, and in breadth from 0-4 to 0-42. The average of eight eggs 

 is O58 by somewhat less than 0*41. 



Piprisoma squalidum (Burt.). The Thick-billed 



Flou'er-peclccr. 



Piprisoma agile (Tick.),Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 37C; Hume, Rough Draft 

 N. $ E. no. 240. 



The Thick-billed Plower- pecker lays from the middle of February 

 to the end of May, according to locality, breeding earlier in the 

 plains and later in the Himalayas. 



The nests vary greatly in material, but very little in size or 

 shape. They are invariably let the material be what it may 

 small, rather full- bottomed, purse-like bags, hung from a small 

 twig as nearly horizontal as possible, and with the aperture with its 

 major axis in the same plane as the twig to which the nest is sus- 

 pended and immediately below the twig. The total length of the 

 nest, measured from the upper surface of the twig to the bottom 

 of the nest, is from 3| to 3| inches. The breadth of the nest at 

 the point of suspension is about ^ inch, and the lower baggy por- 

 tion of the nest is about 2 inches in diameter. The depth of the 

 nest exteriorly below the lower edge of the entrance-aperture is 

 about 1| inch. Typically the nest is, as described by Captain 

 Beavan and figured by "Wolf, a felt-like pliable fabric composed of 

 fibres, and the down taken from young shoots and flower-buds of 

 various plants, specially from the Butea frondosa and our two 

 common Indian Loranthi. The thickness of the fabric for the first 

 inch below the twig scarcely exceeds in this kind of nest J inch, 

 but it thickens gradually, so that at the bottom it is fully f inch 

 thick. The fabric is soft and pliable, so that one nest before me, 

 taken more than six months ago, may even now be rolled up with- 

 out injury. This, however, is not the only type of nest constructed 

 by this species. It sometimes makes a nest of the same shape 

 and dimensions, it is true, but of widely different materials. In 

 these cases the exterior skin of the nest, if I may so term it, is a 

 very loose network of very fine tow-like fibres, backed internally 

 throughout by a thick felting of the soft silky pappus or seed-down 

 apparently of some asteraceous plant. One such nest I myself 

 obtained with three young ones and both parents in the valley of 

 the Sutledge below Kotgurh towards the end of May, so that there 

 is no mistake about the matter. The nest in this case was about 

 5 feet from the ground, and hung in a small thorny bush, a kind 

 of Carissa, I think. 



"Writing from the Kumaon Terai, Mr. E. Thompson says : " I 

 obtained a nest of this bird at Kamnuggur, on the borders of the 



