Larvivora cyana, Gould, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 145; Hume, Rough Draft
N. & E. no. 507.
I have never obtained the nest of the Indian Blue Chat. Mr. Davison found it on the Nilghiris. He says:—"I really quite forget the details of that one egg which I brought you along with the skin of the parent, but it was taken in May on the Nilghiris. I remember very well another nest of this species, which I took in the latter end of March or the beginning of April in a shola or detached piece of jungle about 9 miles from Ootacamund.
"The nest was in a hole in the trunk of a small tree, about 5 feet from the ground, and was composed chiefly of moss, but mixed with dry leaves and twigs. It contained three young birds, apparently about four or five days old."
The late Mr. Mandelli sent me a nest of this species which was found at Lebong (elevation 5500 feet) on the 16th May. It contained three eggs, and was placed on the ground amongst grass on a bank made by the cutting of a hill-road. It is a broad shallow nest, composed exteriorly of vegetable fibre, scraps of dead leaves and tiny pieces of moss matted closely together, and is rather thickly lined with black and red hairs, amongst which one or two soft downy feathers are incorporated. The external diameter of the nest is about 4 inches, the height about 1·5, the cavity is about 2·75 inches in diameter, and rather less than 1 in depth.
Two eggs taken by Mr. Darling[A] are very elongated, somewhat cylindrical ovals, very obtuse at both ends. In both, the shell is fine, and has an appreciable though not brilliant gloss. In one, the ground is a pale delicate clay-brown, and the markings consist only of a zone about 0·2 wide round the large end of densely set dull brownish-red specks, and a few similar specks inside the zone only. In the other, the ground has a light greenish tinge, the zone is less marked and merges in a dull brownish-red mottled cap, and a faint marbling, of a paler shade of the cap, is scattered here and there over the whole surface of the egg. They measure 1 by 0·65 and 0·98 by 0·65.
[Footnote A: I cannot find any account of the finding of the nest of this bird by Mr. Darling amongst Mr. Hume's notes.—Ed.]
The egg taken by Mr. Davison is an elongated, slightly pyriform oval. The shell is moderately fine, but with only a very slight gloss. The ground-colour is a pale slightly greyish green, and the whole egg is thickly (most thickly so about the large end, where the markings are almost perfectly confluent) mottled and streaked with pale brownish red. It measures 0·98 by 0·67.
193. Brachypteryx albiventris (Fairbank). The White-bellied Short-wing.
Callene albiventris, Fairb., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 339 bis.
The Rev. S.B. Fairbank, to whom I have, owed much useful information and many valuable specimens, kindly sent me the subjoined account of the nidification of the White-bellied Short-wing in the Pulney Hills at an elevation of about 6500 feet:—"In April, I found a nest in a hole in the side of the trunk of a large tree some 2 feet from the ground. The hole was just large enough for the nest, and was lined with fine roots. I surprised the bird on her nest several times. There were two eggs in the nest when I first found it that were 'hard-set'. A month afterwards she laid two more in the same place, and I took them in good condition. One egg measures 0·9 by 0·68 inch, and another 0·94 by 0·68 inch. The ground-colour is grey, with a tinge of green, and it is thickly covered with small spots of bistre."