"I also had three eggs, slightly set, brought me on May 21. They are rather smaller and a deeper blue than the ones obtained before, being 1·25 x 1, 1·19 x ·95, 1·21 x ·97 inch. They were all out of the same nest, so that the bird sometimes lays three eggs, though the usual number is two."
Colonel Legge writes in the 'Birds of Ceylon':—"The Black Myna was breeding in the Pasdun Korale on the occasion of a visit I made to that part in August, but I did not procure its eggs."
Other eggs subsequently sent me by Mr. Bourdillon from Mynall, in Southern Travancore, taken on the 9th and 13th April, 1875, are precisely similar to those already described. The eggs that I have measured have only varied from 1·22 to 1·37 in length, and from 0·86 to 0·9 in width.
524. Eulabes intermedia[A] (A. Hay). The Indian Grackle.
[Footnote A: Mr. Hume does not recognize E. javanensis and E. intermedia as distinct. The following account refers to the nidification of the latter, except perhaps Major Bingham's later note, in which he states that he procured two distinct sizes of eggs in the Meplay valley (Thoungyeen). It is very probable that Major Bingham found the nests of both species on this occasion. I have seen no specimen of E. javanensis from the Thoungyeen valley, but at Malewun, further south, it occurs along with E. intermedia.—ED.]
Eulabes intermedia (A. Hay), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 339.
Eulabes javanensis (Osbeck), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 693.
The Indian Grackle, under which name I include E. andamanensis, Tytler, breeds, I know, in the Nepal Terai and in the Kumaon Bhabur; and many are the young birds that I have seen extracted by the natives out of holes, high up in large trees, in the old anti-mutiny days when we used to go tiger-shooting in these grand jungles. I never saw the eggs however, which, I think, must have all been hatched off in May, when we used to be out.
"In the Andamans," writes Davison, "they breed in April and May, building a nest of grass, dried leaves, &c. in holes of trees." He also, however, never took the eggs.
Mr. J.R. Cripps tells us that this species is "common during March to October in Dibrugarh, after which it retires to the hills which border the east and south of the district. About the tea-gardens of Dibrugarh there are always a number of dead trees standing, and in these the Grackles nest, choosing those that are rotten, in which they excavate a hole. I have seen numbers of nests, but as these were so high up and the tree so long dead and rotten, no native would risk going up."
Mr. J. Inglis notes from Cachar:—"This Hill-Mynah is common in the hilly district. It breeds in the holes of trees during April, May, and June."