ASSAM, SYLHET AND CACHAR. 269 



[Common during March to October in Dibrugarh, after 

 ■which they retire to the hills which border the east and south 

 of the district. About the tea gardens in Dibrugarh there 

 are always a number of dead trees standing, and in these the 

 grackles nest, choosing those that are rotten, in which they 

 excavate a hole. I have seen numbers of nests, but as these 

 were so high up, and the tree so long dead and rotten, no 

 native would risk going up. — J. R. C] 



693^er. — Ampeliceps coronatus, Bly. 



A small party of this species passed over me flying up 

 the course of the Barak as I stood on the bank about to cross, 

 and I shot one, a male. I never again met with it in 

 Manipur. The details of this bird were as follow : Male. — 

 Length, 90 ; expanse, 16*4 ; tail, 2'4 ; wing, 5*15 ; tarsus, 

 0-97 ; bill from gape, 1-09 ; weight, 3-73ozs. 



Legs and feet wax yellow with a fleshy tinge ; claws brown ; 

 bill bright wax yellow ; base of lower mandible and gape 

 greenish blue ; irides deep brown ; orbital skin wax yellow, 

 with a slight orange tinge ; edges of lids dusky black. 



In Assam, Sylhet and Cachar I only know of its occurrence 

 in N.-E. Cachar. 



In British Burmah, though said to have been sent from 

 Mergui, I only know of it from the country about and between 

 Moulmein and Tavoy in Central Tenasserim, and again from 

 near Tonghoo at the extreme north of Tenasserim, and further 

 from China-bukur and Elephant Point below Rangoon, and 

 from near Kyekpadein in Pegu. 



I found 6946w. — Ploceus haya, Bly., very common about 

 the bases of the low hills, east of Lakhipur, Cachar, but I 

 never once saw it, at any rate to recognize it, anywhere 

 inside the Manipur frontier. I have it from N.-E. Cachar 

 and various places in the Dibrugarh district, and Godwin- 

 Austen records it from the Khasi hills, but this is all I 

 certainly know as to its distribution in Assam, Sylhet and 

 Cachar. It is common in suitable localities all over British 

 Burmah. I may perhaps remark that since I wrote about this 

 species {III, 153 ; VI, 398), I have received numbers of 

 males shot when breeding, showing that this species never 

 assumes the full yellow back and breast of the smaller 

 Continental Indian species, which latter must, therefore, be 

 the true philippinus. (See also VIII, 331.) 



[The " Took-ra " of the Assamese is common in Dibrugarh 

 in suitable localities during the rainy season, when they 



