468 NOTES ON THE AVIFAUNA OF MOUNT ABOO 



306.— Cyornis Tickellise, Blyth. 



Tickell's Blue Redbreast is somewhat common at Mount 

 Aboo, but I have not met with it in the plains below. It 

 remains on the hills the whole year round, but I never succeed- 

 ed in finding a nest. 



[Like Dicrurus ccerulescens, this species also occurs in the 

 hilly tracts of Kattiawar, but nowhere else within the region 

 I am dealing with so far as is yet known. In regard to this 

 species and Jerdoni, I quote the following from my (still 

 unpublished) museum catalogue. 



" In separating my specimens of the two supposed species 

 Jerdoni (banyumas apud Jerdon) and Tickellice, I was surprised 

 to find that in every case in which the sex had been carefully 

 ascertained and noted, the Jerdonis were males, and Tickellices 

 females. With a series, such as I possess, the sexes ascertained 

 by so many different observers, I was led to conclude that 

 Tickellice must be the female oi Jerdoni. Subsequently my atten- 

 tion was called to Mr. Blanford's letter in the Ibis for 1870, p. 

 533, in which he shows that all the four specimens of Tickellice 

 which he dissected were females, and to a letter of Captain 

 Hayes Lloyd (Ibis, 1872, p. 97), in which he remarked that in 

 the southern districts of Kattiawar, he was surprised to find C. 

 banyumas and C. Tickellice in equal numbers and both very 

 common, that he had frequently shot them off the same tree 

 and within a few minutes of each other, and he adds : " Subse- 

 quent close observation has satisfied me that C. Tickellice is only 

 the female of C. banyumas. Throughout the hot weather, I 

 have had daily opportunities of observing them. There is not 

 a tree under which I have rested that has not been the resort of 

 these pretty little birds ; and I have found as an unvarying 

 rule at this season that when an individual of one species is 

 seen, the other is sure to be found in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood. Jerdon does not describe the female of C. Tickellice, 

 and states that the female of C. banyumas is probably olive- 

 brown, but if this were so, I cannot but think that I should 

 have met with it ; yet notwithstanding the number of blue birds 

 I have observed, and that I am constantly on the watch for the 

 supposed female, it has not yet fallen to my lot to see any but 

 blue individuals of C. Tickellice and C. banyumas, the former of 

 which I believe to be really the female of the latter." Under 

 these circumstances, I have now no hesitation in uniting these two 

 supposed species. Long ago I suspected this, but was completely 

 put off the scent, by the following incident : Mr. Nunn found the 

 nest at Hoshungabad and caught on the nest an unmistakable 

 C. Tickellice ; he also obtained at the same time in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of the nest another Tickellice ; the sexes 

 of these two birds were not ascertained at the time, but they 



