Irena puella (_Lath._), _Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 105; _Hume, Rough Draft
N. & E._ no 469.
Mr. Frank Bourdillon favoured me with an egg of the Fairy Blue-bird,
which with other rare eggs he obtained on the Assamboo Hills. So
little is known of this range that I quote his remarks upon this
locality.
"I must premise that the specimens were obtained along the Assamboo
Range of hills, between the elevations of 1500 and 3000 feet above
sea-level. This range of hills, running in a north-westerly and
south-easterly direction from Cape Comorin to 8°33' north latitude,
forms the boundary line between Travancore and the British Territory
of Tinnevelly, the average height of the range being about 4000
feet, while some of the peaks are as high as 5500 feet. The general
character of the hills is dense forest, broken here and there by grass
ridges and crowned by precipitous rocks, above which lies an almost
unexplored table-land, varying in width from a mile to 12 or 15 miles,
at an elevation of almost 4000 feet."
"The egg of the Fairy Blue-bird," he adds, "was taken slightly set on
the 28th February, 1873, from a loose sparsely-built nest situated in
a sapling about 12 feet from the ground. The nest was composed of
dead twigs lined with leaves, and was about 4 inches broad and very
slightly indented."
As will be remembered, Dr. Jerdon states that "Mr. Ward obtained, what
he was informed were, the nest and eggs; the nest was large, made of
roots and fibres and lined with moss; and the eggs, two in number,
were pale greenish, much spotted with dusky:" and I have no doubt that
Mr. Ward's eggs were genuine.
The egg is an elongated oval, compressed almost throughout its entire
length, very blunt at both points; a long cone, the apex broadly
truncated and rounded off obtusely, sealed on half a very oblate
spheroid. In no one single point--shape, texture of shell, colour or
character of markings--does this egg approach to those of either the
Oriole or the Chloropsis. This shell is very close-grained and fine,
but only moderately glossy. The ground is pale green, and it is
streaked and blotched with pale dull brown. The markings are almost
entirely confluent over the large end (where they appear to be
underlaid by dingy, dimly discernible greyish blotches), and from the
cap thus formed they descend in streaky mottlings towards the small
end, growing fewer and further apart as they approach this latter,
which is almost devoid of markings.
It is impossible to generalize from a single specimen as to the
position this bird _should_ hold, but this one egg renders it quite
certain to my mind that the nearest allies of _Irena_ are neither
_Oriolus_ nor _Chloropsis_, and that it is quite impossible to place
it with the _Dicruridae_. The eggs of _Psaroglossa spiloptera_ are
not very dissimilar, and I expect that it is somewhere between
the _Paradiseidae, Sturnidae_, and _Icteridae_ that _Irena_ will
ultimately have to be located.
The egg measures 1·1 by 0·73.
Mr. Fulton Bourdillon writes:--"The last note I have to send you at
present is that of a Blue-bird's nest (_Irena puella_). Of this there
can be no possible doubt, as my brother and I shot both the male and
female birds, and I took the nest with my own hands. It was in a
pollard tree beside a stream among some thick branches about 20 feet
from the ground. The nest was neatly but very loosely constructed of
fresh green moss, which formed the bulk of the nest, and lined with
the flower-stalks of a jungle shrub. It was very well concealed, and
was about 4 inches broad with a cavity not more than 1½ inch deep. It
contained two eggs slightly set, measuring respectively 1·11 x ·84 and
1·16 x ·81. These eggs tally very fairly in colour, shape, and size
with those sent last year; of the identity of which I was doubtful at
the time, though now I think there can be no mistake.
"Since writing last I have had another nest of _Irena puella_ brought
me with two fresh eggs. The nest was very loosely put together and
similar in all respects to the one last sent. The eggs measure ·95 x
·81 and ·92 x ·79, with the same well-defined ring round the larger
end. The nest was in a small tree about 10 feet from the ground and
was well concealed. It was composed of twigs, without any lining."
The nest sent me by Mr. Bourdillon is a very flimsy affair, reminding
one much of the nest of _Graucalus macii_ and not in the smallest
degree of that of an Oriole. A mere pad, some 4 inches in diameter,
composed of very thin twigs or dry flower-stalks with a couple of dead
leaves intermingled, and an external coating of green moss.
Major C.T. Bingham has favoured me with the following notes from
Tenasserim:--"At the sources of the Winsaw stream, a feeder of the
Thoungyeen river, on the 30th April I found a nest of this bird, a
mere irregularly roundish pad of moss with very little depression in
the centre, containing two fresh eggs, and placed 12 feet or so above
the ground in the fork of an evergreen sapling. The eggs measure 1·18
x 0·86 and 1·19 x 0·86 respectively, and are so thickly spotted and
blotched with brown as to show very little of the ground-colour, which
latter, however, appears to be of a greenish white.
"On the 11th April I was slowly clambering along a very steep
hill-side overlooking the Queebaw choung, a small tributary of the
Meplay stream, when from a tree whose crown was below my feet I
startled a female _Irena puella_ off her nest. I could see the nest
and that it contained two eggs, so I shot the female, who had taken to
a tree a little above me. On getting the nest down, I found it a poor
affair of little twigs, with a superstructure of moss, shaped into a
shallow saucer, on which reposed two eggs, large for the size of the
bird, of a dull greenish white, much dashed, speckled, and spotted
with brown. They were so hard-set that I only managed to save one,
which measured 1·09 by 0·77 inch."
Mr. Davison writes:--"At Kussoom, in some moderately thin tree-jungle
I found the nest of _Irena puella_. The nest was placed in the fork
of a sapling some 12 feet from the ground. The nest externally was
composed of dry twigs, carelessly and irregularly put together. The
egg-cavity was shallow, not more than 1·5 inch at its deepest part,
and it was lined with finer twigs, fern-roots, and some yellowish
fibre. The nest contained two fresh eggs."
Two eggs, taken by Mr. Davison at Kussoom in the north of the Malay
Peninsula, to which the Malayan form does not extend, are rather
elongated ovals, with a slightly pyriform tendency. The shell is fine,
smooth, and compact, and has a perceptible gloss. The ground-colour is
greenish white; round the large end is a huge, smudgy, irregular zone
of reddish brown and inky grey, the one colour predominating in the
one egg, the other in the other. Inside the zone are specks and spots
of the same colours, and below the zone streaks and spots of these
same colours, thinly set, stretched downwards towards the small end of
the egg.
Other eggs subsequently received are very similar to that first sent
by Mr. Bourdillon, except that in shape they are more regular ovals,
and that the brown markings in some have a reddish and in some a
purplish tinge, and that in some eggs the mottings and markings are
pretty thick even at the small end.
In length they seem to vary from 1·08 to 1·2 inch and in breadth from
0·73 to 0·88 inch.
In some eggs the ground appears to have no green tinge, but is simply
a greyish white. In one egg the markings are all of one colour, a sort
of chocolate-brown, a dense almost confluent mass of mottlings in a
broad irregular zone round the large end and elsewhere pretty thickly
set over the entire surface of the egg. They have always a certain
amount of gloss, but are never very glossy.