114 JOURNAL, BOMB A Y NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol IX. 



They are regular ovals in shape, being but slightly compressed to- 

 wards the smaller end ; the texture is fine and close with a decided 

 surface gloss, though the shell is very thin and fragile. 



(202) Tephkodornis pelvicus. — The Nepal Wood-shrike. 

 Oates, No. 486 ; Hume, No. 263. 



Old females sometimes, though very rarely, attain the black bill, for 

 I have one female in my collection which was sexed by myself, and the 

 bill is very nearly entirely black. In old males the irides are bright 

 yellow, in adult, but young birds, it varies from yellow to brownish- 

 yellow in females, and in males of the first year the iris is a dull pale 

 glaucous-blue. 



I believe the flocks never to consist of more than one pair of birds 

 and their last brood. On one occasion I shot all the six birds in a 

 flock, and they proved to be an adult male and female, and four young. 

 On another, I found eleven birds feeding together, but, when they 

 eventually left the tree, they divided into two parties and flew off in 

 opposite directions. 



This bird is very common in North Oachar, more especially in the 

 scattered oak forests to the north of the sub-division. During the 

 breeding season they leave the more open country and take to ever- 

 green forest and heavily wooded ravines and valleys. The nests I have 

 taken of this bird were far more like the nests of Hemipus (except of 

 course in size) than that described in Hume's il Nests and Eggs " (Vol. 

 I, p. 330) as belonging to this bird, and which seems very much like 

 the commonest type of nest of Lanius nigriceps. The three nests 

 I have personally taken were all rather broad, shallow structures made 

 of coarse grasses, twigs and lichen, strongly bound together and lined 

 with fine seed down. 



The eggs contained in the first nest I obtained differ in size only 

 from the eggs of many Minivets ; the ground-colour is white with a 

 very faint tinge of green, and the markings consist of large spots 

 and small blotches of vandyke-brown, rather pale .and different shades 

 of neutral tint ; they are fairly numerous everywhere, but most so at 

 the larger end. 



The three eggs measure -90"* -70", '5 7"* -69" and '83" X '67." 

 The next nest contained only two eggs, in coloration exactly like the 

 most common type of eggs of Pericrocotus erythropygius, the ground- 



