Inside the nest is entirely lined with very fine grass-stems. The nest is everywhere about an inch thick, and the cavity about 3 inches in diameter by nearly 2 deep.
Eggs said to belong to this species kindly sent me by Mr. Mandelli, whose men obtained them on the 27th April, are very Shrike-like in their appearance. In shape they vary from broad to ordinary ovals, generally somewhat compressed towards the small end. The shell is white but almost glossless. The ground-colour is a dead white, and they are profusely speckled and spotted with yellowish brown, paler in some eggs, darker in others. In all the eggs the markings are by far the most numerous towards the large end. Two eggs measure 0·95 and 0·91 in length by 0·74 and 0·72 in breadth respectively.
487. Tephrodornis sylvicola, Jerdon. The Malabar Wood-Shrike.
Tephrodornis sylvicola, Jerd., Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 409; Hume, cat. no. 204.
Major M. Forbes Coussmaker has furnished me with the following note on the nidification of the Malabar Wood-Shrike:—"I took the nest of this bird on April 13th, 1875. It was composed of fine roots and fibres, neatly woven into a shallow cup-like nest, secured to the fork of a horizontal bough and fixed in its place with cobweb, and covered externally with lichen corresponding to that on the bough. It measured 4·2 inches in diameter externally, and 2·4 internally and ·7 deep. Both parent birds were shot. The eggs two in number, rather round, coloured white with faint inky and brown spots."
One of these eggs is a very regular oval, the shell fine but glossless, the ground-colour white, with a faint greenish tinge; round the large end is a pretty conspicuous zone of black or blackish-brown and pale inky purple spots and small blotches, and similar spots and blotches of the same colour are somewhat sparsely scattered over the rest of the surface of the egg. The egg measured 0·98 by 0·73.
488. Tephrodornis pondicerianus (Gm.). The Common Wood-Shrike.
Tephrodornis pondiceriana (Gm.), Jerd B. Ind. i, p. 410; Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E. no. 265.
The Common Wood-Shrike lays during the latter half of March and April. This at least is, I think, the normal season, but Mr. W. Blevutt found a nest at Hansee on the 2nd of June containing two fresh eggs.
I have only taken one nest myself (though I have had many others sent me), and that was on the 2nd of April at Chundowah in Jodpoor, Rajpootana. The nest was in the fork of a ber tree (Zizyphus jujuba), on a small horizontal bough, about 5 feet from the ground. It was a broad shallow cup, somewhat oval interiorly, with the materials very compactly and closely put together. The basal portion and framework of the sides consisted of very fine stems of some herbaceous plant about the thickness of an ordinary pin. It was lined with a little wool and a quantity of silky fibre; exteriorly it was bound round with a good deal of the same fibre and pretty thickly felted with cobwebs. The egg-cavity measured 2·5 inches in diameter one way and only 2 the other way, while in depth it was barely ·86. The exterior diameter of the nest was about 4 inches and the height nearly 2 inches. It contained three fresh eggs, of a slightly greyish-white ground, very thickly spotted and speckled with yellowish brown, dark umber-brown, and a pale washed-out inky-purple. In all, the spots were thickest in a zone round the large end, where they became more or less confluent. I have, however, a large series of these nests, and taking them as a whole, although much more massive, they remind one no little of those of Rhipidura albifrontata and Terpsiphone paradisi and even Aegithina tiphia. They are broad shallow cups, measuring internally 2¼ inches across and about 7/8 inch in depth. They are placed in a horizontal fork of a branch, and are composed of vegetable fibre and fine grass-roots, thickly coated externally with cobwebs, by which also they are fixed on to branches, and lined internally with silky vegetable down or fibre. Externally their colour always approximates closely to the bark of the branch on which they are placed; they are not thin, basket-like structures like those of Aegithina or Rhipidura, but are fully ½ inch thick at the sides and probably ¾ inch thick at the bottom.