The Jungle Babbler, like the White-headed one, breeds pretty well over the whole of Southern India, but while the latter is chiefly confined to the more open plain country, the former is the bird of the uplands, hills, and forests. Still the Jungle Babbler is found at times in the same localities as the White-headed one, and what is more, specimens occur, as in Cochin, which partake of the distinctive characters of both. A great deal still remains to be done in working out properly this group; both in Sindh on the west and the Tributary Mehals on the east, and again in some parts of the Nilghiris, races occur quite intermediate between typical C. terricolor and typical C. malabaricus, while in the south, as already mentioned, forms intermediate between this latter and C. griseus seem common. Three distinguishable races again of C. griseus are met with, but running the one into the other, while intermediate forms between this species and C. somervillii (Sykes) are also met with.
Mr. Davison remarks:—"This bird seems to be very irregular in its time of breeding. I have taken the nest in May, June, October, and December. The nest is rather a loose structure of dry grass and leaves, lined with fine dry grass; it is generally placed in the middle of some thick thorny bush, and cannot generally be got at without paying the penalty of well scratched hands. The eggs, generally five in number, are of a very deep blue with a tinge of green, but of not so decided a tinge as in the eggs of M. griseus. It breeds on the slopes of the Nilghiris, not ascending to more than about 6000 feet."
Mr. Wait, writing from Coonoor, says:—"C. malabaricus builds a cup-shaped nest in small trees and bushes, and lays from three to five very round oval verditer-blue eggs."
Captain Horace Terry says of this species:—"Rather rare at Pulungi, but very common lower down on the slopes and in the Pittur valley. I got a nest on April 5th at Pulungi with three incubated eggs, and on the 6th one with two incubated eggs, in the Pittur valley. The last was built in a hollow in the top of a stump of a tree that had been broken off some ten feet from the ground."
Mr. I. Macpherson writes from Mysore:—"This bird is occasionally found with C. griseus in the bigger scrub forests, but its chief habitat is the larger forests. Its breeding-season is much the same as C. griseus but unlike it, it does not select thorny bushes for building in, its nests being generally found in small trees or bamboo-clumps. Four is the usual number of eggs laid, but five are often found, and the fifth I expect is frequently that of H. varius."
Three eggs sent me by Mr. Carter from Coonoor, in the Nilghiries, are absolutely undistinguishable from those of Argya malcolmi. Like these they are a uniform, rather deep greenish blue, devoid of spots or markings, and very glossy. I do not think that, if the eggs of A. malcolmi, C. malabaricus, and C. terricolor were once mixed, it would be possible to separate them with certainty. Other eggs taken by Mr. Davison are similar but slightly smaller, and, taking them as a whole, I think they average rather darker than those of the two species just mentioned.
The eggs vary in length from 0·93 to 1·02, and in breadth from 0·71 to 0·82; but the average of nine eggs is 0·97 by nearly 0·77.
111. Crateropus griseus (Gm.). The White-headed Babbler.
Malacocercus griseus (Gm.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 60; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E. no. 433.
I should say that the White-headed Babbler breeds all over the plain country of Southern India, not ascending the hills to any great elevation. At the same time, many people would very likely separate the Madras, Mangalore, and Anjango birds, and insist on their being different species; but for my part, seeing how the birds vary in each locality and what a perfect and unbroken chain of intermediate forms connects the most different-looking examples, and that all the several races are separable from the other species of this group by their more or less conspicuously pale heads, I prefer to keep them all as C. griseus.