The latter gentleman subsequently added the following note:—"In July, my men found a nest with two eggs at Nulwar, Deccan. It was built on a small branch of a tamarind-tree, 20 feet from the ground. The nest is similar to that described in the 'Rough Draft' as being found at Allyghur. The whole of the bark used on the outer coating is that of tamarind-tree, and there are a good many feathers and much down incorporated into the structure, inside and out. The eggs differ considerably in colouring. In both the ground-colour is greenish white. One is profusely speckled all over, but more thickly at the smaller end, with brownish red and a few purple blotches, whilst the other egg has the specks less numerous but larger, and chiefly on the larger end, with little or no purple, and the small end almost unsullied."
Finally, Mr. Oates records that "in Lower Pegu nests of this bird may be found from the end of April to the middle of June."
The eggs are of a rather broad oval shape, and, as is often the case even in the typical Shrikes, very blunt at both ends. The ground-colour is a pale delicate greenish white, and they are more or less richly marked with bright, slightly brownish-red specks, spots, and blotches, which, always more numerous at the large end, have a tendency there to form a mottled irregular cap. In many eggs, besides these primary markings, a number of small faint, patches and blotches of pale inky purple are observable, almost exclusively at the large end. The eggs appear to be quite devoid of gloss. I have eggs both of Copsychus saularis and Thamnobia cambaiensis, strange as it may seem, closely resembling, except in size, some types of this bird's egg; and I have one egg of Merula simillima from the Nilghiris, which, though immensely larger, so far as tint, colour, and character of ground and markings go, is positively identical with eggs that I have of this species.
In length the eggs vary from 0·6 to 0·7 inch, and in breadth from 0·5 to 0·56 inch, but the average of twenty-eight eggs is 0·67 nearly by 0·53 inch.
501. Pericrocotus erythropygius (Jerd.). The White-bellied Minivet.
Pericrocotus erythropygius (Jerd.), Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 424; Hume, cat. no. 277.
Mr. J. Davidson, C.S., is apparently the only ornithologist who has discovered the nest of the White-bellied Minivet. Writing on the 25th August, from Khandeish, he says:—"Yesterday I took two nests of Pericrocotus erythropygius. Both nests were like those of P. peregrinus, and were placed about 2½ feet from the ground in a fork of a straggling thorn-bush among thin scrub-jungle. One contained 3 young birds, and one 3 hard-set eggs. I watched the nest, and found the cock sitting on the eggs, and watched him for a minute, so there is no possibility of mistake; but the eggs are not the least what I expected. They are fairly glossy, one being very much elongated, of a greenish-grey ground, with long longitudinal dashes of dark brown, as unlike Minivets' eggs as they can possibly be. They were the only two pairs I saw in a long morning walk, and the nests were easily found by watching the birds. I wish I had known the birds were breeding where they were, as by going three weeks ago I should probably have found many nests, as there are miles and miles of similar jungle, and it is barely 12 miles from Dhulia. It is very provoking. I have had great trouble trying to make the Bhils work for me. They will bring in eggs but not mark them down."
Later on, Mr. Davidson wrote:—"I happened to be staying a few days at Arvee, in the extreme south of Dhulia, and found this bird breeding there in considerable numbers. This was in the end of August (26th to 31st), and I was rather late, most of the nests containing young, and in some cases the young were able to fly. I, however, found eight nests with eggs (most of them hard-set). All the nests, which are small and less ornamented than those of P. peregrinus, were placed from 3 to 4 feet from the ground, in a small common thorny scrub. They were all placed in low thin jungle, and never where the jungle was thick and difficult to walk through. A great deal of the jungle round Arvee is full of anjan-trees, but none of the birds seem to breed in these."
The nests are elegant little cups, reminding one of those of Rhipidura albifrontata, measuring internally about 1·75 inch in diameter and 1 inch in depth, the thickness of the walls of the nest being usually somewhat less than a quarter of an inch. Interiorly the nest is composed of excessively fine flowering-stems of grasses, and externally and on the upper edge it is densely coated with fine, rather silky greyish-white vegetable fibres, in places more or less felted together. It is not ornamented externally with moss and lichen, as those of so many of the Pericrocoti commonly are, only occasionally one or two little ornamental brown patches of withered glossy vegetable scales are worked into the exterior of the nest.
The eggs are not at all like those of the other Pericrocoti with which we are best acquainted; though less densely, and even more streakily marked, they most remind me of the egg of Volvocivora, and in a lesser degree of that of Hemipus picatus.