states that while stationed at Kwala Kangsar (Malacca) many specimens of this Pitta 
were brought to him by the natives, who caught them in snares. He kept some alive 
for several months, and they throve well, being fed on rice, but never became tame. 
One day, when shooting Snipe on the banks of the Perak River, he caught a glimpse of a 
brilliant bird in the bushes, and fired, when he found he had killed a specimen of this 
beautiful species. In Tenasserim Mr. Hume says it is a “common seasonal visitant to 
the whole province.” He had compared specimens from Upper Pegu and found them 
identical with those from Rangoon, Tenasserim, and Malacca. Mr. Oates says that this 
bird appears suddenly in Upper Pegu, during a gale from the south-west in May, which 
brings them in by the dozen, but they disappear in a day or two afterwards. This 
species is also found in Arrakan. In Sumatra, Messrs. Müller and Schlegel state they only 
met this bird in the lowlands, in the wooded base of the mountain range, in moist places 
beneath the undergrowth. Im Borneo, Messrs. Motley and Dillwyn did not find this 
Pitta very common in Labuan. They only occasionally were seen in pairs about dead 
felled wood, and it moved about with a short low flight. They state it cries loudly 
before rain, and from this fact the Malays call it “ Ujan Ujan” (“rain rain”). One shot 
in a mangrove-swamp had its stomach full of small shrimps. 
Salvadori in Att. R. S. Tor. /. e., states that Count Lovera de Maria gave to the Turin 
Museum an example of this Pitta taken aboard his vessel about 20 miles from the coast 
of Luzon. Where did it come from, unless it is also an inhabitant of the Philippine 
Islands ? Luzon is too far away from any of the known habitats of this species to enable 
the bird in question to travel to within its vicinity either before a gale of wind or by any 
other means, unless it was taken in a cage, from which it may have escaped. It is, 
however, on this specimen in the Turin Museum that I have given the Philippines as a 
possible habitat of the species. In the fifth volume of ‘Stray Feathers,’ / e., Mr. Davison 
gives an account of the nest and eggs of this Pitta found by him at Amherst in Burmah. 
The nest was placed on the ground at the root of a small tree in thin jungle close to 
the footpath and was quite exposed. It measured 8 inches in diameter, 5:5 in height, 
entrance 3°5 in diameter; egg-cavity 5:5 wide anteriorly and 3:5 high. It was composed 
of dry twigs and leaves and lined with fibres, and resembled the nest of Pitta cucullata, 
though smaller and less roughly put together, the roof, sides, and foundation much 
thinner, and without a platform. The eggs were nearly uniformly spotted and streaked 
with narrow red and purplish-black markings on a white ground, round ovals in shape, and 
glossy. 
