380 
LANIUS CEISTATUS. 
west coast, and is one of the best-known birds to ornithological observers in the cinnamon-gardens and similar 
open bushy grounds in the vicinity of Colombo. Further south it is not so plentiful in the wooded semi- 
cultivated country west of Tangalla as it is in the south-east of that place. In the low jungle-covered sea- 
board around Hambantota, and thence north, it is very common, as it also is in districts of similar character 
between Batticaloa and TrincomaUe. Though not uncommon about Nuwara EUiya and Kandapolla, it does 
not seem to pass over the Totapella range on to the Horton Plains. In the coffee-districts it prefers the 
patnas to any other localities, and even frequents bushy situations at the top of such isolated peaks as 
AllegaBa, on the summit of which I have met with it. Its departure from the island takes place at the latter 
end of April. I have seen it about Colombo until quite the end of that month. At Aripu Mr. Holdsworth 
gives the duration of its visit from October till April. 
This species is spread throughout India during the cold season, leaving the country in the hot weather 
although some are said to remain and breed in the north. Blyth even says that a few are found about 
Calcutta at all seasons. It is not recorded from the Travancore hills, nor from the Palanis, either by 
Mr. Bourdillon or Mr. Fairbank, and the latter says it is rare at Ahmednagar. In Chota Nagpur it is, says 
Mr. Ball, “common throughout.-” It extends to the eastward as far as Mount Aboo, where it arrives Ibout 
the 1st of September, according to Capt. Butler. Mr. Hume remarks that Mount Aboo is quite on the 
confines of its distribution to the east; and, in fact, it is not recorded at all from Sindh nor the Sambhur-Lake 
district. Whether, in its migration northwards, it passes round the western end of the Snowy range seems 
to be not quite certain ; for though Mr. Hume at first identified Dr. Heuderson^s Yarkand birds as this 
species. Dr. Scully, though he searched well for it, did not meet with it there, and was, moreover, assured by 
the Yarkandis that only one species, L. urenarius, inhabited that region. To the east of the Peninsula it is 
numerous. Mr. Hume writes that it is a cold-weather visitant to the Province of Tenasserim, and thence it 
is a straggler to the Andamans as well, though not found in the Nicobars. In Pegu it is, says Mr. Oates 
“ common during the greater portion of the year, coming in, however, in great numbers in September.” The 
influx here spoken of, which affects the whole of the peninsula of India, is caused, doubtless, by a migration 
over the ranges to the eastward of the Himalayas, from Thibet, Mongolia, and perhaps Eastern Siberia. In 
these distant regions it chiefly breeds, leaving them in vast flocks to travel many thousand miles southwards 
and aural stripe dark brown, paler and less of it on the lores in the female ; all the under surface buff-white 
tinged with rich buff or rufous on the flanks ; vent and under tail-coverts, and the sides of the neck, chest and 
flanks crossed with crescentic markings of dark brovi'u. ’ ’ 
In what is probably the plumage of the second year the upper surface is a ruddy brown with a tinge of grey in it the 
rump and upper tail-coverts rufous with blackish-brown bars, and the quills and wing-coverts less eonspicuJuslv 
edged ; the forehead is still concolorous with the head, and the crescentic margins of the lower parts less pro- 
nounced and faded from off the chest. Some examples (for instance one shot in May) have the forehead pale 
the upper surface pervaded with greyish, and yet the under surface well marked with the browii bars, but the 
sides of the chest and flanks have a rufous adult look about them. 
In some instances these under-surface markings do not vanish for several years : a specimen before me is fully adult 
on the upper surface, but has most of the lower surface and even the sides of the neck crossed with brown 
pencilluigs j and out of twenty-three, adult as regards the forehead and back, nearly half of them have some few 
bars on the itanlca. ^ ^ J 
Ohs. I doubtfully mcludo this species in our lists, not on the evidence of Blyth and Layard (for it appears to me that 
they were speaking of the race of L. cristatus as a whole, as exemplified in the birds which migrate to Cevlonl but 
on the testimony of Mr Hume, who v^ites (‘ Stray Feathers,’ 1873, p. 434) of adult example received by him 
frorn Ceylon, of which he speaks as follows An adult bird, with the grey-brown head and back and pale fore- 
head of luoionensis, either belongs to that species or to a very closely allied one not yet discriminated ” 
1 know of no other adult bii-d with the characters of L. luoionensis having been obtained in Ceylon. I cannot positively 
assert whether one or two immature specimens in my collection may not Mong to this species, for, as I have said 
m my article on the last, the young of the two species are very similar 5 and though, as a rule, the head in the 
young h. crvstatus, after getting beyond its nest-plumage, is more rufous than the back, this may not invarially 
