400 SYLVIIDJE. 



Bill horn-colour, the base fleshy white and the gape yellow ; iris 

 brown ; legs and feet fleshy yellow, claws fleshy brown. 



Length about 5'6 ; tail 2-25 ; wing 2'45 ; tarsus -9 ; bill from 

 gape '65. The second primary is equal to the eighth, or inter- 

 mediate between the seventh and eighth ; the first primary is very 

 long, measuring '85 in length. 



Distribution. Pegu and the northern and central portions of 

 Tenasseriin as a winter visitor. This bird also winters in South 

 China, and it summers in S.E. Siberia. 



Genus PHYLLOSCOPUS, Boie, 1826. 



The genus Phylloscopus contains fifteen Indian species, which are 

 for the most part winter visitors to the plains, retiring for the 

 summer either to the Himalayas or further into Central and 

 Northern Asia. They are all birds of very small size and delicate 

 structure. They closely resemble the birds of the next genus, 

 from which, however, it is desirable to keep them separate on 

 grounds of conveuieuce and structure. In this genus the bill is 

 of much the same shape as in Acanthopneuste, but narrower and 

 much smaller compared with the size of the bird. This would be 

 but an indifferent character were it not accompanied by another 

 which renders the separation of the genera quite easy if good 

 specimens are examined. This is that in Phylloscopus the supple- 

 mentary hairs stop short at the lower edge of the nostrils and do 

 not overhang them, whereas in Acanthopneuste these hairs grow 

 quite up to the culmen and over the nostrils, making this latter 

 genus quite Muscicapine and a connecting one between Phyllo- 

 scopus and Gryptolopha. 



The Willow- Warblers frequent trees and bushes, among the 

 leaves of which they search for insects, frequently launching out 

 after the winged ones in the manner of a Flycatcher. They are 

 not aquatic, nor do they, as a rule, frequent grass and reeds. The 

 males probably of all have a pretty song in the breeding-season. 

 They make rather large soft nests either on the ground or on the 

 branches of trees, and the eggs are either pure white or else white 

 spotted with red. 



In Phylloscopus the supplementary hairs in front of the rictal 

 bristles vary in strength, in some species being weak and in others 

 stronger ; but the rictal bristles themselves are always fairly 

 strong. The first primary is small but not minute, and the length 

 of the second varies in each species, generally furnishing a useful 

 character for identification. The tail is either square or slightly 

 forked. 



The various species of Phylloscopus resemble each other so closely 

 as to render their identification no easy matter without actual 

 comparison with named specimens. The annexed key will, it is 

 hoped, enable all the species to be identified if the plumage is 

 fresh. If the plumage be worn it will, in most cases, be impossible 

 for any one but a practised ornithologist to name the species. If 



