PEBICEOCOTITS FLAMMETTS. 365 



otherwise it would be generally overlooked by the collector while threading his way in the underwood beneath 

 it. Its diet consists of small butterflies and various winged insects, some of which it will occasionally take on 

 the wing as they pass through the branches. In the woods of the Horton Plains I saw it catching insects in 

 the moss with which the trees are entirely covered in that cool region, and its brilliant plumage furnished a 

 striking contrast to the cold grey-looking aspect of the jungle. 



Jerdon notices that in India " it keeps generally to the tops of high trees, iisually in flocks of four or five ; 

 the sexes often apart from one another, all frisking about, picking insects off a branch or leaf, or occasionally 

 catching one in the air." 



Nidification. — I have never been able to obtain any information concerning the nesting of this species in 

 Ceylon ; but Mr. Hume describes the nest, in his ' Rough Draft of Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds/ from 

 information received from Miss Cockburn. He says, " The nests are comparatively massive little cups placed on 

 or sometimes in the fork of slender boughs. They are usually composed of excessively fine twigs, the size of 

 fir-needles, and they are densely plastered over the whole exterior surface with greenish-grey lichens, so closely 

 put together that the side of the nest looks exactly like a piece of lichen-covered branch ; there appears to be 

 no lining, and the eggs are laid on the fine little twigs which compose the body of the nest." The season for 

 laying is confined to July, which is probably the same in the damp districts of Ceylon. The egg is described 

 as pale greenish, " pretty thickly streaked and spotted, mostly so at the large end, with pale yellowish 

 brown and pale rather dingy purple." 



