"Nest found in large bushes or thickets, shallow, circular, 4 inches in diameter, rather coarsely made of fine twigs and grass. Eggs three, ordinary; 29/32 by 21/32: pale rose-colour, thickly sprinkled with blood-red spots, with a darkish livid zone at the larger end.—June." But Tickell, though he warns us at the commencement of his paper (Journal As. Soc. 1848, p. 297) of the "attempts at duplicity of which the wary oologist must take good heed," gives the egg of the Sarus as plain white, and says he has seen upwards of a dozen like this, those of the Roller as full deep Antwerp blue, those of Cypselus palmarum as white with large spots of deep claret-brown, and so on, and it is quite clear that his supposed eggs and nest of L. cristatus belonged to one of the Bulbuls.
Of more than fifty oologists who have collected for me at different times in hills and plains, from the Nilghiris to Huzára on the one side, and to Sikhim on the other, not one has ever met with a nest of L. cristatus. This is doubtless purely negative evidence, but it is still entitled to considerable weight.
From the valleys of the Beas and the Sutlej, as also from Kumaon and Gurhwal, these Shrikes seem to disappear entirely during the summer, and they are then, as we also know, found breeding in Yarkand. It is only in the latter part of the autumn that they reappear in the former named localities, finding their way by the commencement of the cold season to the foot of the hills.
Mr. R. Thompson, to quote one of many close observers, remarks:—"This bird appears regularly at Huldwanee and Rumnugger at the foot of the Kumaon Hills during the cold weather, confining itself to thick hedges and deep groves of trees. Where it goes to in summer I cannot say, it certainly does not remain in our hills."
484. Hemipus picatus (Sykes). The Black-backed Pied Shrike.
Hemipus picatus (Sykes), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 412; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no 267.
I quite agree with Mr. Gray that this bird is a Flycatcher and not a Shrike; no one in fact who has watched it in life can have any doubt on this subject; but yet, except for their being more strongly marked, its eggs have no doubt a very Shrike-like character, at the same time that they exhibit many affinities to those of Rhipidura albifrontata and other undoubted Flycatchers.
Mr. W. Davison says:—"About the first week in March 1871, I found at Ootacamund a nest of this bird placed in the fork of one of the topmost branches of a rather tall Berberis leschenaulti. For the size of the bird this was an exceedingly small shallow nest, and from its position between the fork, its size, and the materials of which it was composed externally, might very easily have passed unnoticed; the bird sitting on it appeared to be sitting only on a small lump of moss and lichen, the whole of the bird's tail, and as low down as the lower part of the breast, being visible. The nest was composed of grass and fine roots covered externally with cobweb and pieces of a grey lichen, and bits of moss taken apparently from the same tree on which the nest was built: the eggs were three in number. The tree on which this nest was built was opposite my window, and I watched the birds building for nearly a week; and, again, when having the nest taken, the birds sat till the native lad I had sent up put out his hand to take the nest. I am absolutely certain, as to the identity of this nest and these eggs."
The eggs brought me by Mr. Davison, of the authenticity of which he is positive, are very Shrike-like in their appearance; they are rather elongated ovals, somewhat obtuse at both ends, and entirely devoid of gloss. The ground-colour is a pale greenish or greyish white, and they are profusely blotched, spotted, and streaked with darker and lighter shades of umber-brown; in both eggs these markings are more or less confluent along a broad zone, which in one egg encircles the larger, in the other the smaller end: these eggs measure 0·7 by 0·5 inch and 0·69 by 0·49 inch.
Captain Horace Terry writes from the Palani Hills:—"Pittur Valley. I had a nest brought me which from the description of the bird must, I think, have belonged to this species. Nest rather a shallow cup placed in a thorny tree about ten feet from the ground, neatly made of grass and moss, lined with fine grass and a few feathers, covered a great deal on the outside with dusky-coloured cobwebs, 2·5 inches across and 1·5 inch deep inside, and 3·25 inches to 3·5 inches across, and 2·25 inches deep outside: contained five very much incubated eggs; shape and marking exactly like those of L. caniceps, having a well-defined zone round the larger end; size about the same or rather smaller than those of Pratincola bicolor."