THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 235 



thick cover. I have found it in the forest just on the outskirts, 

 and have met with it also in large, somewhat isolated trees, but 

 as a rule it keeps to dense low scrub, through which it works it 

 way with remarkable facility, and when once it has got into a 

 good piece of cover it is uncommonly hard to dislodge. Its call 

 and alarm note is a sort of click, click, like the cocking of a 

 very coarse-springed musket-lock ; but frequently I have heard 

 them make a very good attempt at a song, somewhat weak, 

 and monotonous perhaps, but very pleasing withal. It seems 

 to be very rare at the Nicobars, for I only saw and obtained 

 one specimen, which I shot close to the shore in Camorta 

 Island, as it was hunting among some half-withered secondary 

 jungle that had been cut." We saw some specimens, and I shot 

 one, but failed to retrieve it, in some flags and reeds surrounding 

 a small pond in Tillangchong. 



520. Us.— Locustella subsignata, Hume. (2.) 



This species was fully described, and all we had to say in 

 regard to it recorded, Stray Feathers, 1873, p. 409. 



539.— Cisticola schcenicola, JBonap. (6.) 



I have compared the Nicobar bird with others from all parts 

 of India, from Ceylon on the south to Goorgaon on the north, 

 and from Sindh on the west to Dacca and Cachar on the east, 

 and they appear to me to be perfectly identical. The color of 

 the upper surface in this species varies very greatly according 

 to the individuals ; in some it is very much duller and darker 

 than in others, in some the head is very conspicuously streaked 

 pale rufescent and black, in others it is nearly uniform brown, 

 sometimes lighter, sometimes darker; in others again almost 

 uniform black, and so on ; but these differences occur in speci- 

 mens from the same locality and must depend, though I have 

 not yet had time to work it out, on age, sex, or season, or all 

 combined. 



Davison says : — cc Comparatively common at the Nicobars, in 

 the large tracts of grass that occur on many of these islands ; 

 it is also very abundant, perhaps more so than in any other 

 locality, all about the cleared portion of the settlement of 

 Camorta, frequenting the patches of guinea grass, and low 

 scrub that covers the hill sides where forest has been felled 

 and burned. Like Locustella it seldom rises till you are 

 almost on it ; and then flies only a few yards, when it disappears 

 in the long grass, through which it makes its way rapidly, 

 often rising ten or twelve yards from where it first settled ; 



