DICTUTRUS. 207 



of young trees, which get so tremendously wafted about by the 

 wind as to make the retention of the eggs or young in the nest 

 appear almost miraculous. When anyone meddles with the nest, 

 the owners make bold dashes at the head of the robber. The 

 Darjeeling birds are not so knowing as their fellows of Murree, 

 the females of whom are said to sit on the nests with their tails 

 along the boughs so as to entirely conceal themselves. 1 have seen 

 dozens of the nests here, and never once saw the female in this 

 position, but always with her tail across the bough. The nest is a 

 compact shallow cup, measuring externally 4 - 5 inches across by l - 75 

 in height, while the cavity is 3 inches in diameter by about 1*2 in 

 depth. It is made of twigs bound up with cobwebs, among which 

 a few lichens are intermingled. The lining is a mixture of straw- 

 coloured root-fibres and fine branchlets of the same coloured grass- 

 panicles." 



Mr. Mandelli sent me nests of this species, which were taken 

 at Ging, near Darjeeling, on the 26th April and on the 22nd May, 

 the one contained one fresh egg, the other three. They were both 

 placed on branches of large trees at heights of about 20 feet from 

 the ground. They are broad shallow cups, from 4 to 5 inches in 

 diameter, about 2 in height, compactly composed of fine twigs and 

 grass-stems, bound together with cobwebs and with many pieces of 

 lichen and some tiny dry leaves worked in on the outer surface. 

 Interiorly, they are lined with very fine hair-like grass-stems. The 

 saucer-like cavities are about 3 inches in diameter and about 1£ in 

 depth. 



Dr. Jerdon says : — "I found its nest on one occasion, in April, 

 in Lower Malabar. It was shallow and loosely made with roots, 

 and lined with hair, about 20 feet from the ground, on the fork of 

 a tree ; and it contained three eggs of a pinkish-white colour, with 

 some longish rusty or brick-red spots." 



There are two very strongly marked types of this bird's eggs. 

 The eggs of both types are moderately broad, or, at most, some- 

 what elongated ovals, and comparatively devoid of gloss. The 

 first, in its colouring, exactly resembles the eggs of Caprimulgus 

 indicus ; a pinkish salmon-coloured ground, streaked, blotched, 

 and clouded, but nowhere densely (except towards the large end, 

 where there is a tendency to form a cap or zone), with reddish 

 pink, not differing widely in hue from, though deeper in shade 

 than, the ground-colour. Here and there, where the markings are 

 thickest, under-clouds of very faint purple occur, but these are too 

 feeble to attract attention, unless the egg is looked into closely. 

 In the other type of egg, the ground-colour is pale pinkish white, 

 pretty boldly blotched and spotted almost exclusively towards the 

 large end, where there is a broad irregular imperfect zone, with 

 brownish red, intermingled with blotches of very faint inky purple. 

 My description possibly fails to make this as apparent as it should 

 be, but no two eggs can, to a casual observer, appear more distinct 

 than these two types. There is yet, according to Mr. Brooks, a 

 third type of this bird's eggs ; of this he has given me a single 



