THE BIRDS OF NORTH CACHAR. 168 
adept at concealing itself, so that one may often be within a few yards 
of a party, their movements shown by the waving of the grasses, yet 
never obtain a sight of one of them. When they imagine themselves 
free from observance, they often mount to the tops of the reeds and now 
and then take short flights into the air, much in the manner of some of 
the Prinzas. This bird is undoubtedly in part a fruit-eater, for in the 
stomach of one I examined there were a few seeds, which proved to be 
the seed of a small plum-like berry, the fruit of a climbing plant, which 
was very abundant at the place where the bird was shot. The nest is a 
deep cup, very strongly and compactly made. The diamater across the 
top is from 3°83" to 4", and in depth it is rather more than 2-5" to nearly 
3”. Internally it measures about 2°5" across by 2” in depth. Now 
and then the nest is shallow in shape, but such are very rare. 
The materials are composed of shreds of grass, a few narrow strips of 
bamboo leaves, occasionally a dead leaf or two, and still more rarely a 
few very fine elastic twigs. The lining is always the same and consists 
invariably of very fine pieces torn from the inner bark of ekra stems, 
which are in colour a bright yellow. There appears to be but little at- 
tempt at concealment. Ifthe nest is placed on a tree, it is generally fixed 
toa small upright fork, some 6 to 10 feet from the ground, which is 
almost devoid of foliage and, if placed in a bamboo clump, it is always 
near the outside and often in a most conspicuous situation. 
The most common type of egg has the general colour a very pale 
greenish-white, and the markings consist of scanty spots varying in size 
from minute freckles to large blotches, and in colour a pale umber or 
olive-brown with other markings underlying them of a still paler shade 
of the same colour. Here and there are also a few very short-twisted 
lines of dark umber. In other eggs the markings are the same, but the 
ground-colour has a brownish or yellowish tinge, and in a few the ground 
is very nearly white. 
One clutch of two eges in my collection is quite white with a few 
very faint pinky or purply-brown specks at the larger end. With the 
exception of this clutch, in none of my eges do the markings tend to 
form a ring or cap, though they are very irregularly distributed over 
the surface of the eggs. The eggs vary in number from two to 
four ; I have found the former number hard set on three occasions. 
The texture is fairly close, though chalky and fragile, and the surface 
