The birds are identical. Jerdon gave me one of his Cachar specimens, and I compared it with Tytler's types, and certainly Tytler's name was published ten years before Jerdon's (vide Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist., Sept. 1854, p. 176); but no description was published, and I fear therefore that the name given by Colonel Tytler cannot be maintained, unless indeed, which I have been unable to ascertain, either Bonaparte or Verreaux figured or described the specimens Tytler sent them in some French work.
I have only one supposed nest of this species, brought me from Dacca by a native collector who worked there for me under Mr. F.B. Simson. He did not take it himself; it was brought to him with one of the parent birds by a shikaree. The evidence is, therefore, very bad, but I give the facts for what they are worth.
The nest is a rather massive and deep cup, the lower portion prolonged downwards so as to form a short truncated cone. It is fixed between three reeds, is constructed of sedge and vegetable fibre firmly wound together and round the reeds, and is lined with fine grass-roots. It measures externally 5 inches in height and nearly 4 inches in diameter, measuring outside the reeds which are incorporated in the outer surface of the nest. The cavity is about 2½ inches in diameter and nearly 2 inches deep. It contained four eggs, hard-set; only one could be preserved, and that was broken in bringing up-country; so I could not measure it, but the shell was a sort of pale greenish grey or dull greenish white, rather thickly but very faintly speckled and spotted with very dull purplish and reddish brown, with some grey spots intermingled. The nest was obtained (no date noted) between the middle of July and the middle of August. I note that the eggs were on the point of hatching, so that the fresh egg would probably be somewhat brighter coloured.
389. Megalurus palustris, Horsf. The Striated Marsh-Warbler.
Megalurus palustris, Horsf., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 70; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 440.
Nothing has hitherto been recorded of the nidification of the Striated Marsh-Warbler, although it has a very wide distribution and is very common in suitable localities.
The Striated Marsh-Babbler, as Jerdon calls it, has nothing of the Babbler in it. It rises perpendicularly out of the reeds, sings rather screechingly while in the air, and descends suddenly. It has much more of a song than any of the Babblers, a much stronger flight, and its sudden, upward, towering flight and equally sudden descent are unlike anything seen amongst the Babblers.
Mr. E.C. Nunn procured the nest and an egg of this species (which along with the parent birds he kindly forwarded to me) at Hoshungabad on the 4th May, 1868. The nest was round, composed of dry grass, and situated in a cluster of reeds between two rocks in the bed of the Nerbudda. It contained a single fresh egg.
Writing from Wau, in the Pegu District, Mr. Oates remarks:—"I found a nest on the 19th May containing four eggs recently laid. The female flew off only at the last moment, when my pony was about to tread on the tuft of grass she had selected for her home.
"The nest was placed in a small but very dense grass-tuft about a foot above the ground. It was made entirely of coarse grasses, and assimilated well with the dry and entangled stems among which it lay. The nest was very deep and purse-shaped. It was about 8 inches in total height at the back, and some 2 inches lower in front, the upper part of the purse being as it were cut off slantingly, and thus leaving an entrance which was more or less circular. The width is 6½ inches, and the breadth from front to back 4 inches. The interior is smooth, lined with somewhat finer grass, and measures 4 inches in depth by 3 inches from side to side, and by 2 inches from front to back.