Mr. Gates writes:—"The Yellow-bellied Wren-Warbler is very abundant throughout Lower Pegu in suitable localities. In the plains between the Sittang and Pegu rivers they are constant residents, breeding freely from May to August and September. In Rangoon also, all round the Timber Depot at Kemandine, and in the low-lying land between the town proper and Monkey Point, they are very numerous."
The eggs are of the well-known Prinia type—broad regular ovals, of a nearly uniform mahogany-red, and very glossy. To judge from the few specimens I have seen, they average a good deal smaller, and are somewhat less deeply coloured, than those of P. socialis. They vary from 0·52 to 0·6 in length, and from 0·43 to 0·48 in breadth.
464. Prinia socialis, Sykes. The Ashy Wren-Warbler.
Prinia socialis, Sykes, Jerd. B. Ind. ii. p. 170: Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 534.
Prinia stewarti, Blyth, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 171; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 535.
Prinia socialis.
The Ashy Wren-Warbler breeds throughout the southern portion of the Peninsula and Ceylon, alike in the low country and in the hills, up to all elevation of nearly 7000 feet.
The breeding-season extends from March to September, but I am uncertain whether they have more than one brood.
Dr. Jerdon says:—"Colonel Sykes remarks that this species has the same ingenious nest as O. longicauda. I have found the nest on several occasions, and verified Colonel Sykes's observations; but it is not so neatly sewn together as the nest of the true Tailor-bird, and there is generally more grass and other vegetable fibres used in the construction. The eggs are usually reddish white, with numerous darker red dots at the large end often coalescing, and sometimes the eggs are uniform brick-red throughout."
Now, first, as regards the eggs, it is clearly wrong to say that the eggs are usually reddish white; that such eggs, as exceptions, may have occurred I do not doubt, but I have seen more than fifty eggs of this bird taken by Miss Cockburn, Messrs. Carter, Davison, Wait, Theobald, and others, and all were without exception mahogany- or brick-red, at times mottled, somewhat paler and darker here and there, but making no approach, even the most distant, to what Dr. Jerdon says is the usual type. Moreover, I have taken many hundreds of the eggs of stewarti (the northern, rather smaller form), which is not only most closely allied but really very doubtfully distinct, and yet I never met with one single egg of this type. At the same time Mr. Swinhoe ('Ibis,' 1860, p. 50) tells us that P. sonitans also at times exhibits a reddish-white egg; so I do not for a moment question that Dr. Jerdon had seen such eggs, only it must be understood that, so far from constituting the usual type, it is in reality a most abnormal and rare variety. Out of eight correspondents who have collected for me in Southern India, I cannot learn that any one has ever yet even seen an egg of this type.
As regards the nest, this species often constructs a Tailor-bird nest, the true nest being filled in between two or more leaves carefully stitched together to the nest; but it also, like that species, often builds a very different structure.