584 
ZOSTEEOPS PALPEBROSA. 
Mr. Ball writes of the pluck which he observed these little birds display in the Satpura hills in attacking 
the Rose-Einch, a vastly more powerful bird, and driving it away from the flowers of the Mhowa {Bassia lati- 
folia), which, he remarks, forms a favourite hunting-ground of this “ Tit.” In the gardens on the Nilghiris, 
Jerdon says it may be seen clinging to the flower-stalks and “ extracting the minute insects that infest flowers, 
by the pollen of which its forehead is often powdered.” 
Nidification . — The White-eye breeds in June, July, and August, attaching its neat little nest to the 
horizontal fork of a small or moderately-sized tree, sometimes at a height of 20 feet from the ground, or 
suspending it between the twigs or branches of a small bush at a few feet from the soil. It is a frail but 
seemingly strong little work, made of flne tendrils of creepers, moss-roots, thin grass-stalks, and a little moss, 
carefully interwoven, and at the upper edges worked round the supporting twigs ; the exterior is often mixed 
with pieces of seed-down, cotton, cocoons, &c., some of which substances are generally used for the lining of 
the interior as well ; this is about If inch in diameter and is rather shallow. Mr. Morgan writes that it 
builds in the south of India a pretty little cup-shaped nest of golden-coloured moss and thistle-down lined with 
silk-cotton ; he describes the eggs as being two or three in number and of an exceedingly pale blue colour, 
measuring in length 0'71 inch and in breadth 0’51. Some that I have examined were pale greenish blue and 
pointed at the small end. 
In Mr. Hume’s ‘ Nests and Eggs ’ will be found much interesting matter concerning the nesting of this 
White-eye in India, among which Captain Hutton tells us that the little oval cup is so slight and so frail 
“ that it is astonishing the mere weight of the parent does not bring it to the ground ; and yet within it three 
young ones will often safely outride a gale that will bring the weightier nests of Jays and Thrushes to the 
ground.” The majority of the nests taken by him were composed of “ little bits of green moss, cotton, and 
seed-down, and the silk of the wild mulberry-moth torn from the cocoons.” 
