Subsequently he sent me the following full account of the nidification of this Shrike:—
"I have found this Shrike breeding abundantly in the Cinchona reserves in May and June, at elevations of from 3000 to 4500 feet above the sea. It affects open, cultivated places, and builds, from 6 to 20 feet from the ground, in shrubs, bamboos, or small trees. The nest is often suspended between several upright shoots, to which it is firmly attached by fibres twisted round the stems and the ends worked into the body of the nest; sometimes against a bamboo-stem seated on, and attached to, the bunch of twigs given out at a node; or in a fork of a small tree, or end of an upright cut branch where several shoots have sprung away from under the cut and keep the nest in position, when it has a large pad of an everlasting plant or of the downy heads of a large flowering grass to rest on—when the former material is handy it is preferred. The nest is sometimes exposed to view, but generally is tolerably well concealed. It is of a deep cup-shape, very compactly built of flowering grass and stems of herbaceous plants intermixed with fibry twigs, and lined with the small fibry-looking branchlets of grass-panicles. Externally it measures 5 inches across by 3½ inches in depth; internally the cavity is 3½ inches in diameter by nearly 2 inches deep. Usually the eggs are either four or five in number. On one occasion only have I seen so many as six. The coloration is of two distinct types, but one type only is found in the same nest. I suspect that the age of the bird has something to do with the variation of colour in the eggs. In a nest containing four eggs one had the majority of the spots collected on the small, instead of the thick end as usual, and, strange to say, it was addled white. The other three were hard-set. The parents get very much excited when their young are approached, and, as long as the intruder is in the vicinity, keep up an incessant volley of their harsh grating cries, at the same time stretching out their necks and jerking about their tails violently."
Mr. J.R. Cripps, writing from Furreedpore in Eastern Bengal, says:—"Excessively common and a permanent resident. Prefers open plains interspersed with bushes, also the small bushes on road-sides are a favourite haunt of theirs. Breeds in the district. I took ten nests this season from the 11th April to 4th June, with from one to five eggs in each. Four nests were placed in bamboo clumps from 9 to 30 feet high; one 40 feet from the ground on a casuarina-tree, one 20 feet up in a but-tree, and the rest in babool-trees at from 6 to 15 feet high from the ground. There is no attempt at concealment. The nest is a deep cup fixed in a fork, and is made of grasses with a deal of the downy tops of the same for an outside lining; this peculiarity at once distinguishes the nest of this species. The description given by Mr. Hodgson of a nest found by him on the 16th May at Jahar Powah, in 'Nests and Eggs,' p. 172, correctly describes the nests I have found. This species imitates the call of several kinds of small birds, as Sparrows, King-Crows, &c., and I have often been deceived by it."
The eggs of this species, of which, thanks to Mr. Gammie, I now possess a noble series, vary very much in shape and size. Typically they are very broad ovals, a little compressed towards one end, but moderately elongated ovals are not uncommon. The shell is very fine and smooth, and often has a more or less perceptible gloss; in no case, however, very pronounced.
There are two distinct types of colouring. In the one, the ground-colour is a delicate very pale green or greenish white, in some few pale, still faintly greenish, stone-colour; and the markings consist as a rule of specks and spots of brownish olive, mostly gathered into a broad zone about the large end, intermingled with specks and spots of pale inky purple. In some eggs the whole of the markings are very pale and washed-out, but in the majority the brownish-olive or olive-brown spots, as the case may be, are rather bright, especially in the zone. In the other type (and out of 42 eggs, 12 belong to this type) the ground-colour varies from pinky white to a warm salmon-pink, and the markings, distributed and arranged as in the first type, are a rather dull red and pale purple. In fact the two types differ as markedly as do those of Dicrurus ater; and though I have as yet received none such, I doubt not that with a couple of hundred eggs before one intermediate varieties, as in the case of D. ater, would be found to exist—as it is, two more different looking eggs than the two types of this species could hardly be conceived. I may add that in eggs of both types it sometimes, though very rarely, happens that the zone is round the small end.
In length they vary from 0·82 to 1·01, and in breadth from 0·68 to 0·79; but the average of forty-two eggs measured is 0·92 by 0·75.
476. Lanius erythronotus (Vigors). The Rufous-backed Shrike.
Lanius erythronotus (Vig.); Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 402.
Collyrio erythronotus, Vigors, Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 257.
Collyrio caniceps[A] (Blyth), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E.
no. 257 bis.
[Footnote A: Mr. Hume may probably still consider L. caniceps separable from L. erythronotus. I therefore keep the notes on the two races distinct as they appeared in the 'Rough Draft,' merely adding a few later notes.—ED.]
Lanius erythronotus.