"June 16th. Nest and no eggs (building).
July 2nd. 2 eggs (fresh).
July 2nd. 1 egg (fresh).
July 5th. 3 eggs (fresh).
July 25th. 3 young (just hatched).
August 5th. 2 young (fledged)."
Messrs. Davidson and Wenden, writing of this bird in the Deccan, say:—"Common, and breeds in June and July."
Colonel A.C. McMaster informs us that he "found several nests of this bird at Kamptee during June and July; they corresponded exactly with Jerdon's admirable description. Has any writer mentioned that this bird has a faint, but very sweet and plaintive song, which he continues for a considerable time? I have only heard it when a family, old and young, were together, i.e. at the close of the breeding-season."
Lieut. H.E. Barnes, writing of Rajpootana in general, tells us that this Oriole breeds during July and August.
Mr. C.J.W. Taylor, speaking of Manzeerabad in Mysore, says:—"Abundant in the plains. Rare in the higher portions of the district. Breeding in June and July."
The eggs are typically a moderately elongated oval, tapering a good deal towards one end, but they vary much in shape as well as size. Some are pyriform, and some very long and cylindrical, quite the shape of the egg of a Cormorant or Solan Goose, or that of a Diver. They are always of a pure excessively glossy china-white, which, when they are fresh and unblown, appears suffused with a delicate salmon-pink, caused by the partial translucency of the shell. Well-defined spots and specks, typically black, are more or less thinly sprinkled over the surface of the egg, chiefly at the large end. Normally, as I said, the spots are black and sharply defined, and there are neither blotches nor splashes, but numerous variations occur. Sometimes, as in an egg sent me by Mr. Nunn, all the spots are pale yellowish brown. Sometimes, as in an egg I took at Bareilly, a few spots of this colour are mingled with the black ones. Deep reddish brown often takes the place of the typical black, and the spots are not very unfrequently surrounded by a more or less extensive brownish-pink nimbus, which in one egg I have is so extensive that the ground-colour of the whole of the large end appears to be a delicate pink. Occasionally several of the clear-cut spots appear to run together and form a coarse irregular blotch, and one egg I possess exhibits on one side a large splash. The eggs as a body, as might have been expected, closely resemble those of the Golden Oriole, to which the bird itself is so nearly related; and as observed by Professor Newton in regard to the eggs of that species, so in my large series, the prevalence of greatly elongated examples is remarkable.
The eggs vary in length from 1·03 to 1·32, and from 0·75 to 0·87 in breadth; but the average of fifty eggs measured was 1·11 by 0·81.
521. Oriolus melanocephalus(Linn.). The Indian Black-headed Oriole.
Oriolus melanocephalus, Linn., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 110; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E no. 472. Oriolus ceylonensis, Bonap., Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 111.
I have already noticed ('Stray Feathers,' vol. i, p. 439) how impossible it is to draw any hard-and-fast line, in practice, between this the so-called "Bengal Black-headed Oriole" and the supposed distinct southern species, O. ceylonensis, Bp.