The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1

by Allan Octavian Hume

Long ago Captain Cock, writing from Dhurmsala, said:—"I took a nest on the 8th of May, containing four eggs. The eggs are regular, roundish ovals, somewhat pointed towards one end. The ground-colour is white, here and there suffused with a faint pinkish tinge, and it is spotted and blotched with purplish red and pale lilac, most of the spots being gathered into an irregular zone about the large end."

Colonel C.H.T. Marshall, writing from Murree, says:—"Breeds in May, in almost inaccessible places, about 7000 feet up, choosing a thin fork at the outermost end of a bough about 50 or 60 feet from the ground, and always on trees that have no lower branches. The nest is almost invisible from below, as it is very neatly built on the top of the fork; and when the female sits on it, she places her tail down the bough so as entirely to hide herself. The eggs are only to be obtained either by climbing higher up the tree than the nest is, and extracting the eggs by means of a small muslin bag at the end of a long stick, or else by lashing the bough on which the nest is to an upper bough as the climber goes along so as to make it strong enough to support him. The nest is much neater than that of D. ater; the eggs are light salmon-coloured, with brick-red blotches sparsely scattered over them, and are ·95 by ·7 inch."

Dr. Scully records the following note from Nepal:—"This species lays in the valley in May and June, the nest being placed high up in trees, often in Pinus longifolia. The eggs are usually four in number, fairly glossy, in shape moderate ovals, smaller at one end. The ground-colour is pinkish white, with a tinge of buff, sparingly spotted and blotched with brownish red, chiefly at the large end, where the marks tend to coalesce, so as to form an irregular incomplete ring. Four eggs taken on the 28th May measured 1·09 to 1·12 in length, and 0·75 to 0·76 in breadth. The race which I identify with D. himalayanus was found, in very small numbers, on the summit of Sheopuri, at an elevation of about 7500 feet, and was breeding at the time I shot my specimen, viz. the 20th May."

Mr. Gammie found a nest at Mongpho, near Darjeeling, at an elevation of about 3500 feet on the 13th May. It was placed on an outer branch of a tall tree and contained only one partially incubated egg. The nest was a beautifully compact, but shallow cup, placed on the upper surface of the bough, composed externally of roots and coated with a little lichen and a great deal of cobweb. Interiorly lined with the finest grass and moss-roots. The cavity measured about 3 inches in diameter and scarcely more than 1 inch in depth. At the bottom, where it rested on the bough, the nest was not above ¼ inch thick, and consisted only of the lining materials. Laterally it was about ¾ inch thick.

The egg was a broad oval, slightly compressed towards one end, but not at all pointed. The shell very fine and with a slight gloss, the ground-colour a delicate salmon-pink, and with a broad ring of deep brownish-pink spots and blotches intermingled with pale purple subsurface-looking clouds and spots round the large end. The rest of the egg with some half-dozen similar spots.

He subsequently sent me the following note:—"This species is common in the Darjeeling district up to 4000 feet or so. It rather affects the neighbourhood of bungalows, and is a very lively neighbour, especially in the mornings and evenings. These birds are continually quarrelling among themselves, sallying after insects, or making their best attempts at singing. They are dead on Kites, Crows, and such-like depredators. For several days an Owl (Bulaca newarensis) was flying about near the Cinchona Bungalow at Mongpho, and being a stupid creature at the best, and doubly so during daylight when it had no business to be abroad, was evidently considered fair game by the Long-tailed Drongo and Swallow-Shrikes, and so awfully 'sat upon' by them, that its life must have become a burden to it until it left the place in despair of ever getting either peace or comfort about Mongpho.

"They lay in April and May, and have but one brood in the year. The nest is generally either built against a tall bamboo, well up, supported on the branch of twigs at a node, or near the extremity of a branch of a tree, sometimes on quite slender branches of young trees, which get so tremendously wafted about by the wind as to make the retention of the eggs or young in the nest appear almost miraculous. When anyone meddles with the nest, the owners make bold dashes at the head of the robber. The Darjeeling birds are not so knowing as their fellows of Murree, the females of whom are said to sit on the nests with their tails along the boughs so as to entirely conceal themselves. I have seen dozens of the nests here, and never once saw the female in this position, but always with her tail across the bough. The nest is a compact shallow cup, measuring externally 4·5 inches across by 1·75 in height, while the cavity is 3 inches in diameter by about 1·2 in depth. It is made of twigs bound up with cobwebs, among which a few lichens are intermingled. The lining is a mixture of straw-coloured root-fibres and fine branchlets of the same coloured grass-panicles."

Mr. Mandelli sent me nests of this species, which were taken, at Ging, near Darjeeling, on the 26th April and on the 22nd May, the one contained one fresh egg, the other three. They were both placed on branches of large trees at heights of about 20 feet from the ground. They are broad shallow cups, from 4 to 5 inches in diameter, about 2 in height, compactly composed of fine twigs and grass-stems, bound together with cobwebs and with many pieces of lichen and some tiny dry leaves worked in on the outer surface. Interiorly, they are lined with very fine hair-like grass-stems. The saucer-like cavities are about 3 inches in diameter and about 1¼ in depth.

Dr. Jerdon says:—"I found its nest on one occasion, in April, in Lower Malabar. It was shallow and loosely made with roots, and lined with hair, about 20 feet from the ground, on the fork of a tree; and it contained three eggs of a pinkish-white colour, with some longish rusty or brick-red spots."

There are two very strongly marked types of this bird's eggs. The eggs of both types are moderately broad, or, at most, somewhat elongated ovals, and comparatively devoid of gloss. The first, in its colouring, exactly resembles the eggs of Caprimulgus indicus; a pinkish salmon-coloured ground, streaked, blotched, and clouded, but nowhere densely (except towards the large end, where there is a tendency to form a cap or zone), with reddish pink, not differing widely in hue from, though deeper in shade than, the ground-colour. Here and there, where the markings are thickest, under-clouds of very faint purple occur, but these are too feeble to attract attention, unless the egg is looked into closely. In the other type of egg, the ground-colour is pale pinkish white, pretty boldly blotched and spotted almost exclusively towards the large end, where there is a broad irregular imperfect zone, with brownish red, intermingled with blotches of very faint inky purple. My description possibly fails to make this as apparent as it should be, but no two eggs can, to a casual observer, appear more distinct than these two types. There is yet, according to Mr. Brooks, a third type of this bird's eggs; of this he has given me a single example. In shape it is excessively long and narrow, of the type of the eggs of Chibia hottentotta, but its coloration and character of markings are unlike those of any Shrike or Drongo with which I am acquainted, and exactly resemble those of many types of the eggs of the several Bulbuls. The ground-colour is pinkish white, and is thickly speckled and spotted throughout with primary markings of rich brownish red, and feeble secondary ones of excessively pale inky purple. This egg, moreover, possesses a degree of gloss never observable in those of the Dicruri, and therefore, well assured though Mr. Brooks is of the parentage of this egg which he took with his own hands, I feel confident, having since obtained many eggs of Hypsipetes psaroides which are exactly similar to this last described egg, that in, perhaps, indifferent light he mistook this bird for a Dicrurus. I may add that the first described type, of which I have procured numerous specimens from different parts of the Himalayas, taking several nests with my own hands, is most characteristic of this species.