DETAILED LIST OF BIRDS, 
199 
The birds lay in April, May, and June, and the eggs are 
rather long ovals, typically a good deal pointed towards the 
smaller end, but at times nearly perfect ovals. They have 
little or no gloss ; the ground colour varies from white, very 
faintly tinged with pink, to a delicate pink, and they are 
profusely speckled, spotted, blotched, or clouded, with various 
shades of red, brownish red, and purple. The markings vary 
much in character, extent, and intensity of colour. There 
seem to be two leading types, with, however, almost every 
possible intermediate variety of markings ; the one is thickly 
speckled over its whole surface wdth minute dots of reddish 
purple, no dot much bigger than the point of a pin, and no 
portion of the ground colour exceeding 0*1 inch in dia- 
meter free from spots. In these eggs the specklings are 
most dense as a rule throughout a broad irregular zone 
surrounding the large end, and this zone is throughout 
thickly underlaid with irregular ill- defined streaky clouds of 
dull inky purple. In some eggs of this type the smaller end 
is comparatively free from specks. In the other type the 
surface of the egg is somewhat sparingly but boldly blotched 
and splashed, first with a deep umber, chocolate, or purplish 
brown, and secondly with spots and clouds of faint inky 
purple, recalling not a little the style of markings in the 
egg of Rhynchops albicollis. There are eggs partly speckly 
and partly blotched, some in which the markings are all 
rich red and where no secondary pale purple clouds are 
observable, and others again in which all the markings are 
dull pui'plish brown. Generally it may be said that the mark- 
ings have a tendency to form a cap or zone at the large end. 
A nest of three eggs recently obtained from Masuri 
were more richly coloured than any I have yet seen, and 
were decidedly glossy. The ground colour is a rich rosy 
pink, boldly but sparingly blotched and spotted with deep 
maroon, underlaid by clouds and spots of pale purple, which 
appear as if beneath the surface of the shell. In all the 
eggs the markings are far most numerous at the l^rge end, 
where in one they form a huge confluent maroon-coloured 
patch, mottled lighter and darker. In length they vary 
from 0-9 to 1'15, and in breadth from 07 to 0 78. [^. O. if.] 
