288 SYLYIID^. 



October, as well as in February and March, so some of them pro- 

 bably have two broods in the year. I took a nest on the 9th 

 October at Futtegurh, which contained two callow young and one 

 (fresh) egg, which I send you, and which is exactly similar to all 

 the others 1 have taken from time to time." 



The egg sent me by Mr. Anderson is a veiy broad oval in shape, 

 a good deal compressed however, and pointed towards the small 

 end. The shell is very fine and has a decided gloss. In colouring 

 the egg is exactly like those of some of the Blackbirds — a pale 

 green ground, profusely freckled and streaked with a bright, only 

 slightly brownish, red ; the markings are densest round the large 

 end, where they form a broad, nearly confluent, well-marked, but 

 imperfect and irregular, zone. It measures 055 by - 41. 



Colonel C. H. T. Marshall says :— " The Streaked "Wren-"Warbler 

 breeds in great numbers near Delhi in March ; Mr. C. T. Bingham 

 has found several of them in the clumps of surpat grass that had 

 been cut within three feet of the ground on the alluvial land of the 

 Jumna. It was when out with him in the end of March 1876 

 that I first saw the nest of this species. The locality of the nest 

 is exactly that described by Mr. Anderson ; it is oval in shape, 

 with a large side entrance near the top ; it is built of fine grass 

 and seed-down, no cobweb being employed in the structure ; it is 

 loosely made, and there are always a few feathers in the egg-cavity. 

 The whereabouts is generally pointed out by the cock bird, who, 

 seated on the top of the highest blade of grass he can find near 

 where his hen is sitting, pours out with untiring energy his feeble 

 monotonous song, little knowing that by so doing he has betrayed 

 the spot where he has fixed his nest to the marauder. The eggs, 

 of which I have seen about fifteen or twenty, answer the descrip- 

 tion given in ' Stray Feathers ' exactly." 



Major 0. T. Bingham tells us : — " Between the 12th and 31st 

 March this year I found ten nests of this bird, which is very 

 common in the grass-covered land of the Jumna. These nests 

 were all alike, of fine dry grass mixed with the down of the surpat, 

 which also thickly lined the inside. In shape the nests are blunt 

 ovals, with a tiny hole for entrance a little above the centre. 

 Seven out of the ten nests contained four eggs each, the rest three 

 each. The eggs in colour are a pale yellowish white with a tinge 

 of green, thickly speckled with dashes rather than spots of rusty 

 red, tending in some to form a cap, in others a zone round the 

 large end. The average of twenty eggs measured is 053 by 0-44 

 inch. The nests were all, with one exception, supported by 

 stems of the grass being worked into the sides. The one exception 

 was a nest I found in the fork of a tamarisk bush. It is not a 

 difficult nest to find, for when you are in the vicinity of one, one 

 of the birds will flit about the stems of the surrounding clumps of 

 grass and above you freely, opening its tiny mouth absurdly wide, 

 but giving forth the feeblest of feeble sounds." 



Writing on the Avifauna of Mt. Abu and N. Guzerat, Colonel 

 E. A. Butler says : — " I found a nest in a tussock of coarse grass 



