The egg is an elongated oval, compressed almost throughout its entire length, very blunt at both points; a long cone, the apex broadly truncated and rounded off obtusely, sealed on half a very oblate spheroid. In no one single point—shape, texture of shell, colour or character of markings—does this egg approach to those of either the Oriole or the Chloropsis. This shell is very close-grained and fine, but only moderately glossy. The ground is pale green, and it is streaked and blotched with pale dull brown. The markings are almost entirely confluent over the large end (where they appear to be underlaid by dingy, dimly discernible greyish blotches), and from the cap thus formed they descend in streaky mottlings towards the small end, growing fewer and further apart as they approach this latter, which is almost devoid of markings.
It is impossible to generalize from a single specimen as to the position this bird should hold, but this one egg renders it quite certain to my mind that the nearest allies of Irena are neither Oriolus nor Chloropsis, and that it is quite impossible to place it with the Dicruridae. The eggs of Psaroglossa spiloptera are not very dissimilar, and I expect that it is somewhere between the Paradiseidae, Sturnidae, and Icteridae that Irena will ultimately have to be located.
The egg measures 1·1 by 0·73.
Mr. Fulton Bourdillon writes:—"The last note I have to send you at present is that of a Blue-bird's nest (Irena puella). Of this there can be no possible doubt, as my brother and I shot both the male and female birds, and I took the nest with my own hands. It was in a pollard tree beside a stream among some thick branches about 20 feet from the ground. The nest was neatly but very loosely constructed of fresh green moss, which formed the bulk of the nest, and lined with the flower-stalks of a jungle shrub. It was very well concealed, and was about 4 inches broad with a cavity not more than 1½ inch deep. It contained two eggs slightly set, measuring respectively 1·11 x ·84 and 1·16 x ·81. These eggs tally very fairly in colour, shape, and size with those sent last year; of the identity of which I was doubtful at the time, though now I think there can be no mistake.
"Since writing last I have had another nest of Irena puella brought me with two fresh eggs. The nest was very loosely put together and similar in all respects to the one last sent. The eggs measure ·95 x ·81 and ·92 x ·79, with the same well-defined ring round the larger end. The nest was in a small tree about 10 feet from the ground and was well concealed. It was composed of twigs, without any lining."
The nest sent me by Mr. Bourdillon is a very flimsy affair, reminding one much of the nest of Graucalus macii and not in the smallest degree of that of an Oriole. A mere pad, some 4 inches in diameter, composed of very thin twigs or dry flower-stalks with a couple of dead leaves intermingled, and an external coating of green moss.
Major C.T. Bingham has favoured me with the following notes from Tenasserim:—"At the sources of the Winsaw stream, a feeder of the Thoungyeen river, on the 30th April I found a nest of this bird, a mere irregularly roundish pad of moss with very little depression in the centre, containing two fresh eggs, and placed 12 feet or so above the ground in the fork of an evergreen sapling. The eggs measure 1·18 x 0·86 and 1·19 x 0·86 respectively, and are so thickly spotted and blotched with brown as to show very little of the ground-colour, which latter, however, appears to be of a greenish white.
"On the 11th April I was slowly clambering along a very steep hill-side overlooking the Queebaw choung, a small tributary of the Meplay stream, when from a tree whose crown was below my feet I startled a female Irena puella off her nest. I could see the nest and that it contained two eggs, so I shot the female, who had taken to a tree a little above me. On getting the nest down, I found it a poor affair of little twigs, with a superstructure of moss, shaped into a shallow saucer, on which reposed two eggs, large for the size of the bird, of a dull greenish white, much dashed, speckled, and spotted with brown. They were so hard-set that I only managed to save one, which measured 1·09 by 0·77 inch."
Mr. Davison writes:—"At Kussoom, in some moderately thin tree-jungle I found the nest of Irena puella. The nest was placed in the fork of a sapling some 12 feet from the ground. The nest externally was composed of dry twigs, carelessly and irregularly put together. The egg-cavity was shallow, not more than 1·5 inch at its deepest part, and it was lined with finer twigs, fern-roots, and some yellowish fibre. The nest contained two fresh eggs."
Two eggs, taken by Mr. Davison at Kussoom in the north of the Malay Peninsula, to which the Malayan form does not extend, are rather elongated ovals, with a slightly pyriform tendency. The shell is fine, smooth, and compact, and has a perceptible gloss. The ground-colour is greenish white; round the large end is a huge, smudgy, irregular zone of reddish brown and inky grey, the one colour predominating in the one egg, the other in the other. Inside the zone are specks and spots of the same colours, and below the zone streaks and spots of these same colours, thinly set, stretched downwards towards the small end of the egg.