THE BIRDS OF NORTH KANARA. 667 



Supa also I once obtained a nest which I believe to have belonged 

 to it., This was a nest brought to me on the 15th May, 1893, by a 

 man who had seen it a day before, and who with the natural perverse- 

 ness of the native of these parts said nothing about it when he was 

 with me, but when he saw me in the morning in the neighbourhood 

 of the rice field he was working in, instead of telling me about it and 

 bringing me to the nest, rushed off to the nest and carried it off to me, 

 in so doing breaking one of the three eggs it contained. As it reached 

 me within twenty minutes of its being taken, and I started at once to 

 the spot, 1 hardly doubted that I would be in time to identify the 

 owner, but though I waited two hours not a bird came near the nest, 

 and I then reluctantly left a man near it, and searched the whole 

 forest round. It was singularly devoid of birds, and all I saw were a 

 pair of Zosterops, another of Kittacincla, and a pair of this bird and a 

 few wood -peckers. Half the hill was evergreen, the rest deciduous with 

 the young leaves just coming out, and it was not easy to miss seeing what 

 there was. The nest was in a hollow in the top of a dead stump about 

 one and a half feet from the ground, and was composed of green moss 

 lined with a white lichen, and with a few threads of fine grass and black 

 roots. The eggs had been originally three in number, and were of a dull 

 greenish- white with bold brownish blotches over the larger end. They 

 were not exactly what one would have expected the eggs of this bird to 

 be, and were considerably larger than those of C. tlckelli. I am therefore 

 keeping them in hopes some one will obtain authenticated eggs of this 

 bird and let us know what they are like. They certainly are eggs not 

 represented in my Indian collection of 850 species, and I cannot think 

 of any other Kanara bird whose eggs they could possibly be. 

 576. Cyornis tickelli, Blyth. 



This bird is a good deal commoner than C. pallidipes, and is generally 

 distributed through all the forests, but is much more common above 

 than below the Ghats. I have often taken nests in March and April 

 in the Halyal, Supa and Sirsi talukas, built as a rule in banks on the 

 sides of the roads, and containing three or four olive-brown eggs. 

 579. Stoparola melanops, Vig. 



I have come across this bird singly or in pairs perhaps a dozen 

 times in Kanara. These have all been between the months of Novem- 

 ber and March. 



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