363. Acrocephalus stentoreus (H. & E.). The Indian Great Reed-Warbler.
Acrocephalus brunnescens (Jerd.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 154. Calamodyta stentorea (H. & E.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 515.
Both Mr. Brooks and Captain Cock succeeded in securing the nests and eggs of the Indian Great Reed-Warbler in Cashmere. Common as it is, my own collectors failed to get eggs, though they brought plenty of nests.
The nest is a very deep massive cup hung to the sides of reeds. A nest before me, taken in Cashmere on the 10th June, is an inverted and slightly truncated cone. Externally it has a diameter of 3¼ inches and a depth of nearly 6 inches. It is massive, but by no means neat; composed of coarse water-grass, mingled with a few dead leaves and fibrous roots of water-plants. The egg-cavity is lined with finer and more compactly woven grass, and measures about 1¾ inch in diameter and 2¼ inches in depth.
It breeds in May and June; at the beginning of July all the nests either contained young or were empty. Four is the full complement of eggs.
Mr. Brooks noted in epist.:—"Srinuggur, 10th June. I went out early this morning on the lake here to look for eggs of Acrocephalus stentoreus, but it came on to rain so heavily that I only partially succeeded. I took three nests, two with three eggs each, and one with four young ones, the latter half-hatched. The eggs very much resemble large and boldly-marked Sparrows' eggs. They are smaller than the eggs of A. arundinaceus, but very similar. The latter have larger clear spaces without spots than those of our bird. I neither saw nor heard any other aquatic warbler."
Later, in a paper on the eggs and nests he had obtained in Cashmere, he stated that this species "breeds abundantly in the Cashmere lakes. The nest is supported, about 18 inches above the water, by three or four reeds, and is a deep cup composed of grasses and fibres. The eggs are four, very like those of A. arundinaceus, but the markings are more plentiful and smaller."
Captain Cock writes to me that "the Large Reed-Warbler is very common in the reeds that fringe all the lakes in Cashmere. It breeds in June, builds a largish nest of dry sedge, woven round five or six reeds, of a deep cup form, which it places about 2 feet above the water. It lays four or five eggs, rather blunt ovals, equally blunt at both ends, blotched with olive and dusky grey on a dirty-white ground."
Mr. S.B. Doig, who found this bird breeding in the Eastern Narra in Sind, writes:—"On the 4th August, while my man was poling along in a canoe in a large swamp on the lookout for eggs, he passed a small bunch of reeds and in them spotted a nest with a bird on it. The nest contained three beautiful fresh eggs. A few days later I joined him, and on asking about these eggs he described the bird and said he had found several other nests of the same species, but all of them contained young ones nearly fledged. I made him show me some of these nests, all of which were situated in clumps of reed, in the middle of the swamp, and in these same reeds I found and shot the young ones which, though fledged, were not able to fly. These I sent with one of the eggs to Mr. Hume, who has identified them as belonging to this species. The nests were composed of frayed pieces of reed-grass and fine sedge, the latter being principally towards the inside, thus forming a kind of lining. The nests were loosely put together, were about 3 inches inner diameter, 1¼ inch deep, the outer diameter being 6 inches. They were situated about a foot over water-line in the tops of reeds growing in the water."
Colonel Legge says:—"This species breeds in Ceylon during June and July. Its nest was procured by me in the former month at the Tamara-Kulam, and was a very interesting structure, built into the fork of one of the tall seed-stalks of the rush growing there; the walls rested exteriorly against three of the branches of the fork, but were worked round some of the stems of the flower itself which sprung from the base of the fork. It was composed of various fine grasses, with a few rush-blades among them, and was lined with the fine stalks of the flower divested, by the bird I conclude, of the seed-matter growing on them. In form it was a tolerably deep cup, well shaped, measuring 2½ inches in internal diameter by 2 in depth. The single egg which it contained at the time of my finding it was a broad oval in shape, pale green, boldly blotched with blackish over spots of olive and olivaceous brown, mingled with linear markings of the same, under which there were small clouds and blotches of bluish grey. The black markings were longitudinal and thickest at the obtuse end. It measured 0·89 by 0·67 inch."