BIRDS OF TENASSERIM. 169 



Common throughout the province, but only where the country 

 is fairly open and not ascending- the higher hills. 



[This species has the same notes and habits as the common 

 Southern Indian rufipennis. It avoids the dense forests and the 

 heavy kine grass, and greatly affects gardens and fields. It 

 feeds about chiefly on the ground, stalking about slowly with 

 its tail carefully lifted. They eat every living thing they can 

 seize, devouring small mammals, reptiles, insects, and possibly 

 small stranded fish and crustaceans, as I have continually seen 

 them prowling about on mud banks of rivers just above the 

 water's edge. — W. D.] 



The whole of the specimens, thirty-five in number, preserved 

 by us from all parts of Tenasserim from the extreme north to 

 the Pakchan Estuary, belong to this species. 



Formerly, some of our specimens were recorded as ewycercus, 

 a totally different and immensely larger species which we have 

 since obtained in the Malay Peninsula, but which does not, 

 so far as we know, ever extend so far north as the Pakchan 

 Estuary. 



The present species varies a good deal in size, chiefly according 

 to sex; in the adult females the wings vary from 7*75 to 8-4, and 

 in adult males from 7 '3 to 7'9. 



This species differs from rufipennis, Illiger,in having the whole 

 interscapulary region red, even in birds in the barred plumage 

 of the young. It differs from the true eurycercus in its much 

 smaller size, (as will be seen from the dimensions of this latter 

 species given further on,) and in its conspicuous green tail (I 

 speak of course of adults), the tail being blue in eurycercus. It 

 differs from maximus, nobis (described at the same time as inter- 

 medius) , which has the wing 9 to 9*5 ; in its smaller size, deeper 

 chestnut tinge, and in the decided blue of its breast and abdomen, 

 in full plumaged adults ; these parts having a decided green shade 

 mixed with the blue in maximus. Lastly, it differs from the Acheen 

 species which I formerly erroneously identified* with eurycercus, 

 in its smaller bill (sex for sex) deeper chestnut, and much more 

 purely green tail. 



The following are the dimensions of some few specimens of 

 the present species, five males and three females, measured in the 

 flesh. Unfortunately, having measured so few birds, our 

 dimensions do not fully represent the limits within which the two 

 sexes vary : — 



Males.— Length, 17-75 to 19-75 ; expanse, 22-25 to 24-5 j tail, 

 9-0 to 10-75 ; wing, 73 to 7*75 - tarsus, 2-12 to 2-35 ■ bill from 

 gape, 1-75 to V82 ■ weight, about 8 ozs. 



S. F., I., 453. 



22 



