Though larger than those of the European Chough, they resemble them so closely that there can be no doubt as to their authenticity.
In shape the eggs are moderately elongated ovals, very slightly compressed towards the small end. The shell is tolerably fine and has a slight gloss. The ground-colour is white with a faint creamy tinge, and the whole egg is profusely spotted and striated with a pale, somewhat yellowish brown and a very pale purplish grey. The markings are most dense at the large end, and there, too, the largest streaks of the grey occur.
One egg measures 1·74 by 1·2.
Subfamily PARINAE.
31. Parus atriceps, Horsf. The Indian Grey Tit.
Parus cinereus, Vieill, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 278.
Parus caesius, Tick., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 645.
The Indian Grey Tit breeds throughout the more wooded mountains of the Indian Empire, wherever these attain an altitude of 5000 feet, at elevations of from 4000 or 5000 to even (where the hills exceed this height) 9000 feet.
In the Himalayas the breeding-season extends from the end of March to the end of June, or even a little later, according to the season. They have two broods—the first clutch of eggs is generally laid in the last week of March or early in April; the second towards the end of May or during the first half of June.
In the Nilghiris they lay from February to May, and probably a second time in September or October.
The nests are placed in holes in banks, in walls of buildings or of terraced fields, in outhouses of dwellings or deserted huts and houses, and in holes in trees, and very frequently in those cut in some previous year for their own nests by Barbets and Woodpeckers.