284 MU, H. E. DRESSER ON PALLAS’S WILLOW WARBLER 
The only available records of the nidification of the present 
species are those by I)r. Dybowski and Captain Cock, the former 
of whom writes (J. F. 0., 1872, p. 361) as follows : — “Although 
not uncommon, we did not find its nests in Kultuk, but found 
them in Petrowsk, beyond the Baikal, on the left bank of the 
Sselenga Eiver. The nests were placed on young Pines or old moss- 
covered Cedars on the branches near the stem, three to four metres 
high, and were neatly constructed of fine grass-bents and green 
moss, oven-shaped, the opening being towards the trunk of the 
tree, and lined with feathers and horse- or cattle-hair ; the nest is 
also higher than it is broad. About the middle of June the 
female lays live or six eggs, and commences sitting directly the 
first egg is laid, so that in the same clutch one finds quite fresh as 
well as incubated eggs. The female sits close, and can easily be 
caught on the nest. While she is sitting the male perches on the 
top of a tree and sings incessantly. The eggs are white, with dots 
and small spots of violet, ash-grey, and red, which are chielly 
collected so as to form a not very close wreath round the larger 
end, and measure from 14 by 11 to 15 by 10.5 millimetres, being 
broadest in the middle.” These eggs described by Dr. Dybowski 
were figured in the ‘ Journal fur Ornithologie,’ 1873, plate I. fig. 10. 
Captain Cock, who found it breeding at Sonamerg, four marches 
up the valley of the Sind Eiver, late in May and early in June, 
says that its nest is placed on the outer end of the branch of a Fir 
tree at from six to forty feet elevation, and sometimes on a small 
sapling Pine where the junction of the bough with the stem takes 
place. The nest is partially domed, the outer portion consisting 
of moss and lichen, so arranged as to harmonise with the bough on 
which it is placed, and lined with feathers and thin birch-bark 
strips, never with hair; and the eggs, five in number, are pure 
white, richly marked with dark brownish red, particularly at the 
larger end, forming there a fine zone on most of the eggs, and 
intermingled with these spots, and especially on the zone, are some 
spots and blotches of deep purple-grey. In size the eggs vary 
from 0.53 by 0.43 to 0.55 by 0.44. 
Although Pallas’s Willow Warbler cannot be separated specifically 
from the Phylfoscopi, it approaches very nearly in its general 
habits and nidification to the Golden Crested Wren. It frequents 
Pine woods, and those of mixed Pine and Birch in hilly districts, 
