182 LIST OF BIRDS IN MANIPUR, 



at Airaole, "in high forest, there was a crowd of birds 

 skirmishing about in a thick tree some hundred feet or so 

 above my head. It was so dark, the tree was dense and the 

 sky clouded, that I could not make out what they were, so 

 I gave them the benefit (?) of the doubt, fired, and dropped 

 no less than seven Red-whiskered Bulbuls. But there were 

 other birds in the melee, for I heard notes I did not recognize 

 and I know this bird's voice well." In the basin they com- 

 monly consort with Molpastes burmanicus. In the Western 

 hills they are less numerous. All the Manipur birds have 

 the bands at the sides of the breast very dark, and the red ear- 

 tuft very small ; they are in fact what commonly passes for 

 TYionticola, but this latter was really founded on an abnormal 

 specimen, three of which I have now seen, in which the red 

 extended nearly round the eye as a sort of ring (but not 

 meeting in front), while the ear-tuft only existed so far as 

 it was included in part of this ring. This is not a species. 

 but merely a monstrosity to which this species is subject. 

 I shot one of these this time in Manipur, and have seen before 

 one from Assam and one from Burmah. 

 I measured two normal specimens : — 

 Length. Expanse, Tail. Wing. Tarsus. Bill front gape. Weight. 



$ ... 8-2 11-5 3 7 3 6 8 087 1-26 oz. 



„ ... 84 11-1 8-6 3-55 O'S 09 1-25 „ 



Legs, feet and bill black ; irides brown. 



This species is common in Northern Sylhet (I did not see 

 it in the low-lying swampy parts of Southern Sylhet) , Cachar, 

 the entire valley of Assam up to Sadiya, and in many parts of 

 the Garo, Khasi and Naga hills. 



[Excessively common all over the Dibrugarh district ; when 

 the tea bushes are in flower, dozens of them are seen at a time. 

 The Assamese call them Pay-too-loo-ha. They nest in all sorts 

 of places, tea bushes, clumps of grass, small bushes in heavy 

 forest, but in no instance have I seen a nest ten feet off the 

 ground, most being about four feet. — J. R. C] 



I have never seen this species in Arakan, and it is scarce 

 or wanting in North-Western Pegu, but it is common else- 

 where in the more level portions of Pegu, and generally dis- 

 tributed in open country throughout Tenasserim, while Ramsay 

 also procured it in Karenee. 



In Assam, Cachar and Sylhet we have everywhere (so far 

 as all the specimens that I have received and procured from 

 over fifty different localities go), 461. — Molpastes pygceus, 

 Hodgs., or forms of this verging towards intermedins; in 



