FROG-MOUTHS. 
85 
spots and bars of white; and the abdomen pale buffi Nothing has been recorded 
of its habits; but of the nest of the South Indian frog-mouth Mr. Hume writes 
that “ instead of moss, a few fragments of dead leaves are incorporated, but 
the material is chiefly a Soft felt-like mass, precisely similar to that used by 
B. hodgsoni, but greyish white instead of brown. It is a mere pad with a shallow 
depression on the outer surface, a broad groove on the base of the nest showing 
where it had nested on the upper surface of an almost horizontal bough.” The 
egg was white. Mr. Hartert says that the part is formed by the down, taken from 
the “ powder-downs ” of the bird itself, and then completed by having the outside 
GREAT EARED FROG-MOUTH liat. size). 
interwoven and covered with bits of bark and lichen, so that the nest entirely 
resembles the branch to which it is attached. The nests of B. hodgsoni, which 
Mr. Hume describes, were about three and a half inches in diameter and three- 
quarters of an inch in thickness; the lower surface of the pad, where they were 
in contact with the branch, having a thin coating of moss. The whole of the nest is 
a compact, brown, felt-like mass, very soft and downy, and composed, as it appears 
to be, of excessively fine moss rootlets, but withal as soft as the fur of any little 
mammal. This will doubtless be found to be the powder-down of the bird itself, 
owlet Frog- These birds differ from the other frog-mouths in having the 
Mouths. nostrils situated near the tip of the bill, and being open and prominent. 
