Prinia flaviventris (Deless.) Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 169: Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 532.
Of the Yellow-bellied Wren-Warbler's nidification I know personally nothing.
Tickell describes the nest as pensile but quite open, being a hemisphere with one side prolonged, by which it is suspended from a twig. The eggs, he says, are bright brick-red without a spot.
Mr. H.C. Parker tells me that "this bird breeds in the Salt-Water Lake, or rather on the swampy banks of the principal canals that intersect it. The nest is nearly always placed on an ash-leaved shrub-like plant growing on the banks of the canal and overhanging the water. One taken on the 26th July, 1873, containing four nearly fresh eggs, was almost touching the water at high tide. The male has the habit, when the female is sitting, of hopping to the extreme point of a tall species of cane-like grass which grows abundantly in these swamps, whence he gives forth a rather pleasing song, erecting his tail at the same time, after which he drops into the jungle and is seen no more. It is almost impossible to make him show himself again."
The nest, which I owe to Mr. Parker, and which was found in the neighbourhood of the Salt-Water Lake, Calcutta, on the 26th July, is of an oval shape, very obtuse at both ends, measuring externally 4 inches in length and about 2¾ inches in diameter. The aperture, which is near the top of the nest, is oval, and measures about 1 inch by 1½ inch. The nest is fixed against the side of two or three tiny leafy twigs, to which it is bound lightly in one or two places with grass and vegetable fibre; and two or three leafy lateral twiglets are incorporated into the sides of the nest, so that when fresh it must have been entirely hidden by leaves. The nest was in an upright position, the major axis perpendicular to the horizon. It is a very thin, firm, close basket-work of fine grass, flower-stalks, and vegetable fibre, and has no lining, though the interior surface of the nest is more closely woven and of still finer materials than the outside. The cavity is nearly 2½ inches deep, measuring from the lower edge of the entrance, and is about 2 inches in diameter.
During this present year (1874) Mr. Parker obtained several more nests of this species, all built in the low jungle that fringes the mud-banks of the congeries of channels and creeks that are known in Calcutta by the name of the "Salt Lake."
This jungle consists chiefly of the blue-flowered holly-leaved Acanthus ilicifolia and of the trailing semi-creeper-like Derris scandens. It is in amongst the drooping twigs of the latter that the nest is invariably made.
The nests vary a good deal in shape; some are regular cylinders rounded off at both ends, with the aperture on one side above the centre—a small oval entrance neatly worked. Such a nest is about 4.5 inches in length externally from top to bottom, and 2·75 in diameter; the aperture 1·3 in height, and barely 1·0 in width.
Others are still more egg-shaped, with a similar aperture near the top, and others are more purse-like. The material used appears to be always much the same—fine grass-stems intermingled with blades of grass, and here and there dry leaves of some rush, a little seed-down, scraps of herbaceous plants, and the like; the interior, always of the finest grass-stems, neatly arranged and curved to the shape of the cavity. The nests are firmly attached to the drooping twigs, to and between which they are suspended, sometimes by line vegetable fibre, but more commonly by cobwebs and silk from cocoons, a good deal of both of which are generally to be seen wound about the surface of the nest near the points of suspension or attachment.
Four appears to be the full number of the eggs. Mr. Doig, writing from Sind, says:—"This bird is tolerably common all along the Narra, but as it keeps in very thick jungle it is not often seen unless looked for. I took my first nest on the 12th, and my second on the 17th of May. This evidently is the second brood, as I noticed on the same day a lot of young birds which must have been fully six weeks old. One nest was lined with horsehair and fine grasses. Four was the normal number of eggs."