THE SMALL BLACK-HEADED ORIOLE. 215 
son^ it becomes rare. Capt. Bingham states that it is common in the 
Thoungyeen valley, and Capt. Wardlaw Ramsay procured it in Karennee. 
It appears to extend some distance down the Malay peninsula. To the 
north it extends through Upper Burmah to India and is found over the 
whole peninsula down to Ceylon. It also occurs in Cochin China and 
Siam. 
Eew birds are more conspicuous and better known than the Black-headed 
Oriole. It affects alike the deepest forests and the most frequented 
gardens and compounds. Its exquisite call of five whistling notes is 
one of the most charming sounds heard in the jungle, and it seems to be 
uttered at all hours of the day and almost all the year round. I have 
frequently found the nest from March to J une. It is usually placed in a 
mango-tree at a considerable height from the ground. In shape it is a 
sort of cup and it is suspended like a cradle between two twigs. The 
materials of which it is made are vegetable fibres and soft pieces of bark. 
The eggs, usually three in number, are pinkish white spotted with black. 
209. ORIOLUS XANTHONOTUS. 
THE SMALL BLACK-HEADED ORIOLE. 
Oriolus xanthonotus, Horsf. Zool. Res. in Java, pi. ; id. Trans, Linn. Soc xiii. 
p. 152; Stoliczka, J.A. S.B. xxxix. ^t. ii. p. 317; Salvad. TJcc, Born. p. 277; 
Sharpe, Cat. Birds B. Mus. iii. p. 213 ; Ttoeedd. P. Z. S. 1878, p. 616 ; Hume 8j- 
, Dav. S. F. vi. p. 330 ; Hume, S. F. viii. p. 99. 
Description. — Male. The whole head, neck, chin, throat and breast 
black ; abdomen and flanks white streaked with black ; under tail-coverts 
yellow ; sides of the breast tinged with yellow j axillaries grey ; under 
wing-coverts black margined with yellow; back, scapulars, lesser wing- 
coverts, rump and upper tail-coverts yellow ; median wing-coverts black, 
broadly tipped with yellow ; the remaining coverts and all the quills 
black, most of them very narrowly edged with yellow j tail black, tipped 
with yellow, very narrowly so on the central pair of feathers, and increasing 
in extent outwardly. 
The female has the whole upper plumage, with the lesser wing-coverts and 
tertiaries, olive-yellow, and the feathers of the head with dusky striations 
the lores are grey, the feathers round the edges of the eyelids yellow, and the 
ear-coverts olive-yellow with paler shafts ; the chin and throat are whitish ; 
the breast, abdomen and flanks white streaked with black ; under tail- 
coverts yellow ; median and greater wing-coverts brown edged with olive- 
yellow ; primaries dark brown_, very narrowly edged with pale yellow ; 
secondaries dark brown, broadly edged with olive-yellow j tail olive-yellow, 
