According to Mr. Hodgson's notes and figures, the Chestnut-throated Shrike-Tit breeds in Sikhim and Nepal up to an elevation of 6000 or 7000 feet. The nest is placed at a height of 6 to 10 feet from the ground, between some slender, leafy, horizontal fork, between which it is suspended like that of an Oriole or White-eye. It is composed of moss and moss-roots and vegetable fibres, beautifully and compactly woven into a shallow cup some 4 inches in diameter, and with a cavity some 2·5 in diameter and less than 1 in depth. Interiorly the nest is lined with hair-like fibres and moss-roots; exteriorly it is adorned with pieces of lichen. The eggs are two or three in number, very regular ovals, about 0·77 in length by 0·49 in width. The ground-colour is a delicate pinky lilac, and they are speckled and spotted with violet or violet-purple, the markings being most numerous towards the large end, where they have a tendency to form a mottled zone.
243. Aegithine tiphia (Linn.). The Common Iora.
Iora zeylonica (Gm.) et I. typhia (Linn.), Jerd. B. Ind.
ii, pp. 101, 103.
Aegithine tiphia (Linn.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. nos. 467, 468.
I have already on several occasions (see especially 'Stray Feathers,' 1877, vol. v, p. 428) recorded my inability to distinguish as distinct species Ae. tiphia and Ae. zeylonica. I am quite open to conviction; but believing them, so far as my present investigations go, to be inseparable, I propose to treat them as a single species in the present notice.
The Common Iora (the genus, though possibly nearly allied, is too distinct from Chloropsis to allow me to adopt, as Jerdon does, one common trivial name for both) breeds in different localities from May to September. I have taken nests and eggs of typical examples of both supposed species, and have had them sent me with the parent birds by many correspondents; and though both vary a good deal, I am convinced that all the variations which occur in the nests and eggs of one race occur also in those of the other. If one gets only two or three clutches of the eggs of each, great differences, naturally attributed to difference of species (see Captain Cock's remarks, infrà), may be detected; but I have seen more than fifty, and, so far as I am concerned, I have no hesitation in asserting that, as in the case of the birds so in that of their nests and eggs, no constant differences can be detected if only sufficiently large series are compared.
The birds build usually on the upper surface of a horizontal bough, at a height of from 10 to 25 feet from the ground. Sometimes, when the bough is more or less slanting, the nest assumes somewhat more of a pocket-shape. Occasionally it is built between three or four slender twigs, forming an upright fork; but this is quite exceptional.
As a rule nests of the Iora very closely resemble those of Leucocerca, so much so that when I sent a beautiful photograph of a nest, which I had myself watched building, of the latter species to Mr. Blyth, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be a nest of the former. There is, however, a certain amount of difference; the Iora's nests are looser and somewhat less compact and firm. My experience does not confirm Mr. Brooks's remarks (vide infrà) that they are usually shallower; on the contrary all those now before me are, as indeed all the many I can remember to have seen were, deep, thin-walled cups, which had been placed on more or less horizontal branches, not uncommonly where some upright-growing twig afforded the nest additional security. The egg-cavity averages about 2 inches in diameter, and varies from an inch to 1¼ inch in depth; the walls, composed of vegetable fibres, and varying in different specimens from only one eighth to three eighths of an inch in thickness, are everywhere thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also the nest is firmly attached to the branch on which it is seated, as well as, where such adjoin the nest, to any little twig springing from that branch. Interiorly they are more or less neatly lined with very fine grass-stems. The bottom of the nest in its thinnest part is rarely above one eighth of an inch in thickness, but running, as it so often does, down the curving sides of the branch, it becomes a good deal thicker, and where placed on a small branch, say not exceeding an inch in diameter, the lateral portions of the bottom of the nest are sometimes more than half an inch in thickness.
One nest which I obtained recently in the Botanical Gardens at Calcutta was built in an upright fork of four slender twigs; and in this case the bottom of the nest was obtusely conical, and at its deepest point may have been nearly an inch in depth. I have never seen a similar nest.
The eggs are normally three in number, but I have at times found only two, and these more or less incubated.
Mr. Brooks, writing of a nest he took in the Mirzapoor District, says:—"Did you ever get particulars of the nest of Iora zeylonica on the forked branch of a mango-tree 12 or 14 feet from the ground? Nest composed of the same materials as that of Leucocerca albifrontata, but not quite so neat and much more shallow; eggs salmon-coloured and spotted with pale reddish brown, intermixed with a few larger dashes of purple-grey. The bird lays in July; three eggs. This is the only nest I have not taken since I came to India the second time."