Lophophanes melanolophus (_Vig._) _Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 273: _Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 638.
The Crested Black Tit breeds throughout the Lower Himalayas west of
Nepal, at elevations of from 6000 to 8000 feet.
The breeding-season lasts from March to June, but the majority have
laid, I think, for the first hatch by the end of the first week in
April, unless the season has been a very backward one. They usually
rear two broods.
They build, so far as I know, always in holes, in trees, rocks, and
walls, preferentially in the latter. Their nests involve generally two
different kinds of work--the working up of the true nests on which the
eggs repose, and the preliminary closing in and making comfortable the
cavity in which the former is placed. For this latter work they use
almost exclusively moss. Sometimes very little filling-in is
required; sometimes the mass of moss used to level and close in an
awkward-shaped recess is surprisingly great. A pair breed every year
in a terrace-wall of my garden at Simla; elevation about 7800 feet.
One year they selected an opening a foot high and 6 inches wide, and
they closed up the whole of this, leaving an entrance not 2 inches in
diameter. Some years ago I disturbed them there, and found nearly half
a cubic foot of dry green moss. Now they build in a cavity behind one
of the stones, the entrance to which is barely an inch wide, and in
this, as far as I can see, they have no moss at all.
The nests are nothing but larger or smaller pads of closely felted
wool and fur; sometimes a little moss, and sometimes a little
vegetable down, is mingled in the moss, but the great body of the
material is always wool and fur. They vary very much in size: you
may meet with them fully 5 inches in diameter and 2 inches thick,
comparatively loosely and coarsely massed together; and you may meet
with them shallow saucers 3 inches in diameter and barely half an inch
in thickness anywhere, as closely felted as if manufactured by human
agency.
Six to eight is considered the full complement of eggs, but the
number is very variable, and I have taken three, four, and five
well-incubated eggs.
Captain Beavan, to judge from his description, seems to have found
a regular cup-shaped nest such, as I have never seen. He says:--"At
Simla, April 20th, 1866, I found a nest of this species with young
ones in it in an old wall in the garden. I secured the old bird for
identification, and then released her. The nest contained seven young
ones, and was large in proportion. The outside and bottom consists of
the softest moss, the nest being carefully built between two stones,
about a foot inside the wall; the rest of it is composed of the finest
grey wool or fur. Diameter inside 2·5; outside about 5 inches. Depth
inside nearly 3 inches; outside 3·6."
Captain Cock told me that he "found several nests in May and June in
Cashmere. The first nest I found was in a natural cavity high up in a
tree, containing three eggs, which I unfortunately broke while taking
them out of the nest. The interior of the cavity was thickly lined
with fur from some small animal, such as a hare or rat. I found my
second nest close to my tent in a cleft of a pine, quite low down,
only 3 feet from the ground. I cut it out and it contained five
eggs of the usual type--broad, blunt little eggs, white, with rusty
blotches."
Colonel G.F.L. Marshall writes:--"I have only found two nests of this
species in Naini Tal, both had young (two in one nest, in the other
I could not count) on the 25th April; they were at about 7000 feet
elevation, built in holes in walls, the entrance in both cases being
very small, having nothing to distinguish it from other tiny crevices,
and nothing to lead any one to suppose that there was a nest inside.
It was only by seeing the parent birds go in that the nest was
discovered."
The eggs of this species are moderately broad ovals, with a very
slight gloss. The ground-colour is a slightly pinkish white, and they
are richly blotched and spotted, and more or less speckled (chiefly
towards the larger end), with bright, somewhat brownish red.
The markings very commonly form a dense, almost confluent zone or cap
about the large end, and they are generally more thinly scattered
elsewhere, but the amount of the markings varies much in different
eggs. In some, although they are thicker in the zone, they are still
pretty thickly set over the entire surface, while in others they are
almost confined to one end of the egg, generally the broad end.
These eggs vary much in size and in density of marking. The ordinary
dimensions are about 0·61 by 0·47, but in a large series they vary in
length from 0·57 to 0·72, and in breadth from 0·43 to 0·54. The
very large eggs, however, indicated by these _maxima_ are rare and
abnormal.