284 



10 inches long, 8 broad, and 6 high, with a 3-inch circular hole at 

 one end ; side of nest everywhere rather more than 1 inch thick ; 

 composed of large dead leaves and roots all matted together with 

 earth. On the exterior there are some large sticks and twigs. 

 Eggs five (female sitting very closely, although the eggs were fresh), 

 highly glossy, white, beautifully marbled with marks of inky purple 

 and lines or scrawls with a few dots of reddish purple. The whole 

 shell is very thickly covered with these marks, more so at the thick 

 end than elsewhere. Size 1-15, 1-12, 1-08, 1-10, 1-10, by -88, -87, 

 88, -88, -87, respectively. 



" On the same day three other nests were found, presumably of 

 this species. From the remains of egg-shells near one, it was 

 evident that the young had flown. The other two appeared to be 

 new; one was placed on the side of a nullah on the root of a tree, 

 and the other on a tree-trunk where the tree separated into three 

 branches about two feet from the ground." 



Major C. T. Bingham found some nests of this Pitta in Tenas- 

 serim. He says : " I got my first nest of this bird at Pynekyoon, 

 on the Pynekyoonchoung, a feeder of the Hlinebooey river. 



" On the 2nd May, a long hot march from the top of the Dawna 

 Pass took me to Pynekyoon, at the outskirts of which I heard 

 Pitta cyanoptem calling loudly. Going through some scrub and 

 bamboo, I flushed one of these, and to my delight found she had 

 been seated on two fresh glossy white eggs, streaked and boldly 

 blotched with purplish lilac, which were laid inside a firmly made 

 little round oven of a nest, some 7 or 8 inches in diameter, with 

 the entrance high up on one side. The nest was constructed of 

 bamboo-leaves matted together with earth, and placed at the roots 

 of a bamboo-bush. On the 9th May I found a second nest at the 

 foot of a rhododendron-bush on the side of the hill behind Maul- 

 main. This was a much larger affair and much more loosely made. 

 It looked for all the world like an accumulation of leaves and grass, 

 and but for my dog flushing the female off it, I should never have 

 taken it for a nest. It contained three eggs of the same type as 

 above described, and the cavity in which they lay was lined with 

 roots, &c. A third nest I found unfinished. A fourth on the 

 25th May, at Kaukarit on the Houndraw, containing 5 eggs. 



"In all 10 eggs procured ; these measure 1*05 x 0-87, 1'02 x 8G, 

 1-02 x 0-86, 1-01 x 0-82, 1-00 X 0-83, 0-99 x 0-87, 1-01 x 0-87, 0-95 

 X 0-81, 1-00 x 0-86, and 1-00 X 0-82." 



The eggs procured by Mr. Davison are in some respects of the 

 regular Pitta type, very round ovals, glossy, and with a white or 

 creamy- white ground, but they are, as a rule, far more thickly 

 marked and richly coloured than those of any of our other Ground- 

 Thrushes with which I am acquainted. The markings consist of 

 rather small, generally irregular, often angular, blotches, spots, 

 streaks, smudges, and lines, thickly set, and, to judge from the six 

 eggs before me, pretty uniformly distributed over the whole sur- 

 face of the egg. They are of two colours maroon-red, almost 



