ASSAM, SYLHET AND CACHAR. 193 



In British Burmah I as yet only know of its occurrence in 

 Northern Pegu and the more northern portions of Tenasserim. 



486. — Pratincola ferreus, Hodgs. 



I never chanced to see this in the Western hills, but I found 

 it sparingly distributed all over the central and southern 

 portions of the basin, and quite plentiful on the Eastern hills, 

 where at Aimole it was very abundant. 



I met with this near Lakhipur (in the low hills east of that 

 place) and have it from N.-E. Cachar, the Khasi hilis 

 and Joonkotollee in Dibrugarh, but this is all I know of its 

 distribution in Assam, Sylhet or Cachar, 



[Fairly common in the cold weather (I shot and measured 

 7 c? and 4 ? ) in Dibrugarh, where it keeps to bushy ground, 

 such as tea gardens, and is seldom seen in the open paddy 

 fields. The male utters a tiny whistling " tweet, tvvaet," canary- 

 like note but weaker. This species is figured by Keulemans 

 in " Contributions to Indian Ornithology, Lahore to Yarkand," 

 edited by Messrs. Hume and Henderson. The males that I have 

 seen were none of them as blue, and the females were deci- 

 dedly of a reddish brown. They begin to arrive in the first 

 week of November and leave by the 15th of March. — J. K. C] 



This species occurs in the Arakan hills and in Northern 

 Pegu, though there it is, I believe, rare, and to Central and 

 Northern Tenasserim it is a mere straggler. 



487.— Oreicola jerdoni, Bly. 



Never seen anywhere in the hills, but common all over the 

 basin, and particularly so all about the suburbs of the capital. 

 Indeed it is one of the commonest birds in Manipur. They 

 are very tame and familiar and sit about singing their little 

 song on the tips of high grass stems, particularly of grass hedges, 

 alongside a stream or wet ditch. As no full reliable measure- 

 ments of this species were on record, I measured many : — 



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