"13th May, 1873. A clutch of young birds left the nest this morning at Poona.
"19th May, 1873. I found a nest of half-fledged young birds this day at Poona. The tree was almost denuded of leaves, and the heat of the sun being very intense, the parent bird was nevertheless sitting close. Its eyes were closed, and it was gasping hard. One of the young ones had crawled out from under the parent, and was sitting on the edge of the nest, also gasping hard.
"I do not exactly gather from your notes in the 'Rough Draft' what form the spots usually take. In my nest taken on the 12th May all four eggs had the zone quite as distinct as the eggs of a Fan-tailed Flycatcher. The seven eggs taken from two nests at Khandalla, on the other hand, had not the least appearance of a zone, but were spotted, after the manner of Sparrows' eggs. In both the latter cases I saw the old bird fly off the nest and alight on a tree a few yards off.
"I remember one little Shrike of this species which used to come down every day to pick up crumbs of bread and pieces of potatoe put out for the Sparrows. (Being a true naturalist I love Sparrows.)
"My brother on one occasion saw one of these Shrikes trying to catch a garden lizard—not a gecko.
"Of course you know that the young of this handsome and brightly coloured Shrike have a plain and curiously marked plumage, reminding one a little of the pateela Partridge. I never saw this Shrike in Bombay."
The eggs of this, the smallest of all our Indian Shrikes, differ in no particular, so far as shape, colour, and markings go, from those of its larger congeners; that is to say, for every egg of this species an exactly similar one might be picked out from a large series of L. lahtora or L. erythronotus; but at the same time there is no doubt that pale-creamy and pale-brownish stone-coloured grounds predominate more amongst the eggs of this species than in those of the two above-named. The markings are also, as a rule, more minute and less well-defined; indeed, in the large series I possess there is not one which exhibits the bold sharp blotches common in the eggs of L. lahtora, and not uncommon in those of L. erythronotus.
In length they vary from 0·75 to 0·95 inch, and in breadth from 0·62 to 0·71 inch; but the average of forty-five eggs is 0·83 by 0·66 inch nearly.
475. Lanius nigriceps (Franklin). The Black-headed Shrike.
Lanius nigriceps (Frankl.), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 404.
Collyrio nigriceps, Frankl., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 259.