piping out Its "long-drawn, plaintive, though loud, whistling note", or It 
will seize some looed for morsel of food and then dart quickly out of sight. 
Its discoverer remarks that at such times It Is very Impatient of ooser- 
vatlon, and also that it appears to consort in pairs; this condition ie, 
however, doubtless varied by the companionship of the yearling birds with 
their parents, and a brood of such probably combined to form a little troop 
of four which I me. with at sunset on the occasion above mentioned. At 
this period of the day it exhibits the restless habits of the Thrush family, 
by coming into the op£n and giving vent to its vocal powers, combined with 
a boldness foreign to its nature, for the male which I precured at Hackgalla 
sat whistling for some moments in an exposed tree by the roadside, and allow¬ 
ed me to dismount from my pony and shoot it. During the few minutes to wh. 
my observations were confine , the rest of the family flew hither and thi¬ 
ther across the road, uttering a high sibilant whistle. 
It would likewise appear to wander occasionally from the shelter of the 
forest, for Mr Forbes Laurie tells me of one which he discovered under an 
umbrageous tree at the outskirts of the plantation, which when approached,- t 
took refuge under a coffee bush, running in and out beneath the branches, 
and refused to depart until his coolies endeavoured to capture it by throw¬ 
ing a blanket over the shrub 
Its food consists of various insects, coleoptera, &c- and in the stomach of 
my specimen I detected the bones of a frog, probably of the tree frequenting 
species (Polypedates). It is much to be feared that the extensive felling 
of the forest for t6a planting, in'the upper range, will limit within the 
smallest possible bounds the portion of country in Ceylo - alone fit for the 
habitation of this species, and very possibly conduce to its ultimate extinc¬ 
tion. 
NIDIFICATION 
Nothing of any certainty in known of the nesting of the Whistling Thrash, 
but I am inclined to the belief;that several nests which I have found on 
the banks of trees be Ion. to It. They resembled those usually constructed 
by this family, and were deep, ample oops, composed almost entirely of moss 
ano,fine roots, fixed in niches in overhanging trees, or in forks of sap¬ 
lings at some height from the ground. 
The lower bird in the picture is a male shot near Hackgalla. 
The upper bird is describe:! elsewhere. 
