on the Birds of South-eastern China. 173 



following the plough as Rooks are wont to do, and it seems 

 probable that they live entirely on grubs and insects. 



In the summer mouths, after the young are hatched, 

 Grackles go about in family-parties, but in October and 

 November, when tlieir numbers are largely augmented by 

 others from further north, they form themselves into 

 large flocks, and these join company with those of Starlings 

 and Mynahs, the whole concourse roosting in favoured 

 reed-beds or bamboo-clumps, and performing graceful 

 aerial evolutions at sunset before retiring to rest, with 

 much clamour and squabbling. 



This bird, in south-eastern China, places its large, untidy, 

 globular nest usually in a bombax-tree, but not infrequently 

 also in a banyan or a bamboo, and it shews a decided 

 preference for the proximity of the abode of a Magpie. 

 The first nest is usually completed about the middle of 

 April, and the young are hatched after about sixteen days 

 incubation. They usually rear three broods, and for each 

 laying they build a new nest, the first of which occupies 

 them ten oi" fourteen days in construction, whilst later ones 

 can be finished in a day if necessary. The three nests are 

 often placed in the same tree, and after the first clutch of 

 eggs has been hatched the empty nest is usually comman- 

 deered, without delay, by a pair of Mynahs, Acridotheres 

 cristatellus , who, having added a few feathers and the 

 indispensable piece of snake slough, proceed to lay in it. 



On one occasion the three nests were found in one tree, 

 the latest being in possession of the Grackles, the earliest 

 in that of a pair of Mynahs, whilst the second contained 

 a nest of the Magpie-Robin with a clutch of three eggs. 



The full clutch for the first laying is four or five eggs, 

 much more often the former ; for the second, three or four, 

 usually three, and for the last, two or three, more frequently 

 two. 



The eggs of this species are usually blue and unspotted, 

 but on various occasions pure white eggs were found, and 

 on others the eggs were observed to be spotted with minute 

 markings of brownish purple. These spotted eggs are 



