"26th March. Found a nest of Chaptia aenea, building, when on the march from Tavoy to Nwalabo, some seven miles east of Tavoy, in the fork of a bamboo-branch 12 feet from ground.
"29th March. Took two fresh eggs of Chaptia aenea, and shot the bird off nest, about twenty-three miles east of Tavoy, in open bamboo-land, very low elevation. The nest was built in the fork of an overhanging branch of a bamboo some 50 feet from the ground.
"13th April. Found a nest of Chaptia aenea with two large young ones. Nest built in a tree some 40 feet from ground, in open forest about twenty miles east of Tavoy.
"22nd April. Found a nest of Chaptia aenea with two large young ones. Nest built at the end of a bough about 30 feet from ground, near Tavoy."
The nests of this species are quite of the Oriole type, more or less deep cups suspended between the forks of small branches or twigs of some bamboo-clump or tree. Exteriorly they are composed of dry flags of grass, bits of bamboo-spathes, or coarse grass, bound together with vegetable fibres and often with a good deal of cobweb worked over them; sometimes a tiny bit or two of moss may be found added, and often the fine thread-like flower-stems of grass. Interiorly they are generally lined with excessively fine grass. In one or two nests very fine black fern-roots are intermingled with the grass lining. The nests vary a good deal in size, but are all extremely compact, and while some are decidedly massive, nearly an inch thick at bottom, others are scarcely a quarter of this in thickness beneath. In one the cavity is 2·5 inches broad by 3 long, and fully 2 deep; in another it is about 2·5 inches in diameter by scarcely 1·25 inches in depth. In one nest four fresh eggs were found; in another three fully incubated ones. The nests were suspended at heights of from 10 to 30 feet from the ground.
The eggs sent by Mr. Gammie very much recall the eggs of Niltava and others of the Flycatchers. They are moderately elongated ovals, in some cases slightly pyriform, in others somewhat pointed towards the small end. The shell is fine and compact, smooth and silky to the touch, but they have but little gloss. The ground-colour varies from a pale pinkish fawn to a pale salmon-pink, and they exhibit round the large end a feeble more or less imperfect and irregular zone of darker-coloured cloudy spots, in some cases reddish, in some rather inclining to purple, which zone is more or less involved in a haze of the same colour, but slightly darker than the rest of the ground-colour of the egg.
The eggs vary in length from 0·76 to 0·88, and in breadth from 0·6 to 0·64. The average of fifteen eggs is 0·82 by 0·61.
335. Chibia hottentotta (Linn.). The Hair-crested Drongo.
Chibia hottentota (L.), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 439; Hume, Rough Draft
N. & E. no. 286.
Mr. R. Thompson says:—"The Hair-crested Drongo is extremely common as a breeder in all our hot valleys (Kumaon and Gurwhal). It lays in May and June, building in forks of branches of small leafy trees situated in warm valleys having an elevation of from 2000 to 2500 feet. The nest is circular, about 5 inches in diameter, rather deep and hollow; it is composed of fine roots and fibres bound together with cobwebs, and it is lined with hairs and fine roots. They lay from three to four much elongated, purplish-white eggs, spotted with pink or claret colour."