Mr. Cripps, writing from Fureedpore, says:—"Very common in long grass fields. Permanent resident. It utters its soft notes while on the wing, not only in the cold season but the year through; it is very noisy during the breeding-time. Breeds in clumps of grass a few inches above as well as on the ground. I found five nests in the month of May from 23rd to 28th: one was on the ground in a field of indigo; the rest were in clumps of 'sone' grass and from the same field composed of this grass. One nest contained three half-fledged young, and the rest had four eggs slightly incubated in each. Although they nest in 'sone' grass which is rarely over three feet in height, it is very difficult to find the nest, as the grass generally overhangs and hides it. Only when the bird rises almost from your feet are you able to discover the whereabouts. On several occasions I have noticed this species perching on bushes."
The eggs, which, to judge from a large series sent me by Mr. Cripps, do not appear to vary much in shape, are moderately broad ovals, more or less pointed towards one end. The shell is fine and fragile but entirely devoid of gloss; the ground-colour is white with a very faint pinky or lilac tinge, and they are thickly speckled all over with minute markings of two different shades—the one a sort of purplish brown (they are so small that it is difficult to make certain of the exact colour), and the other inky purple or grey. In most eggs the markings are most dense at or about the large end, and occasionally a spot may be met with larger than the rest, as big as a pin's head say, and some of these seem to have a reddish tinge, while some are more of a sepia.
The eggs vary from 0·75 to 0·86 in length and from 0·59 to 0·62 in breadth, but the average of twelve eggs is almost exactly 0·8 by 0·6.
394. Hypolais rama (Sykes). Sykes's Tree-Warbler.
Phyllopneuste rama (Sykes), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 189.
Iduna caligata, Licht., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 553.
I have never myself obtained the nest and eggs of Sykes's Tree-Warbler, P. rama, apud Jerd.[A] On the 1st April, at Etawah, my friend Mr. Brooks shot a male of this species off a nest; and I saw the bird, nest, and eggs within an hour, and visited the spot later. The nest was placed in a low thorny bush, about a foot from the ground, on the side of a sloping bank in one of the large dry ravines that in the Etawah District fringe the River Junina for a breadth of from a mile to four miles. The nest was nearly egg-shaped, with a circular entrance near the top. It was loosely woven with coarse and fine grass, and a little of the fibre of the "sun" (Crotalaria juncea), and very neatly felted on the whole interior surface of the lower two thirds with a compact coating of the down of flowering-grasses and little bits of spider's web. It was about 5 inches in its longest and 3½ inches in its shortest diameter. It contained three fresh eggs, which were white, very thickly speckled with brownish pink, in places confluent and having a decided tendency to form a zone near the large end. Three or four days later we shot the female at the same spot.
[Footnote A: I reproduce the note on this bird as it appeared in the 'Rough Draft,' but I think some mistake has been made, as Mr. Hume himself suggests. Full reliance, however, may be placed on Mr. Doig's note, which is a most interesting contribution.—ED]
A similar nest and two eggs, taken in Jhansi on the 12th August, were sent me with one of the parent birds by Mr. F.R. Blewitt, and, again, another nest with four eggs was sent me from Hoshungabad.
There ought to be no doubt about these nests and eggs, the more so that I have several specimens of the bird from various parts of the North-Western Provinces and Central Provinces killed in August and September, but somehow I do not feel quite certain that we have not made some mistake. Beyond doubt the great mass of this species migrate and breed further north. I have never obtained specimens in June or July; and if these nests really, as the evidence seems to show, belonged to the birds that were shot on or near them, these latter must have bred in India before or after their migration, as well as in Northern Asia.
Though one may make minute differences, I do not think either of the three nests or sets of eggs could be certainly separated from those of Franklinia buchanani, which might well have eggs about both in April and August; and I am not prepared to say that in each of these three cases Hypolais rama, which frequents precisely the same kind of bushes that F. buchanani breeds in, may not accidentally have been shot in the immediate proximity to a nest of the latter, the owner of which had crept noiselessly away, as these birds so often do.