"26th March. Found a nest of _Chaptia aenea_, building, when on the
march from Tavoy to Nwalabo, some seven miles east of Tavoy, in the
fork of a bamboo-branch 12 feet from ground.
"29th March. Took two fresh eggs of _Chaptia aenea_, and shot the bird
off nest, about twenty-three miles east of Tavoy, in open bamboo-land,
very low elevation. The nest was built in the fork of an overhanging
branch of a bamboo some 50 feet from the ground.
"13th April. Found a nest of _Chaptia aenea_ with two large young
ones. Nest built in a tree some 40 feet from ground, in open forest
about twenty miles east of Tavoy.
"22nd April. Found a nest of _Chaptia aenea_ with two large young
ones. Nest built at the end of a bough about 30 feet from ground, near
Tavoy."
The nests of this species are quite of the Oriole type, more or less
deep cups suspended between the forks of small branches or twigs of
some bamboo-clump or tree. Exteriorly they are composed of dry flags
of grass, bits of bamboo-spathes, or coarse grass, bound together with
vegetable fibres and often with a good deal of cobweb worked over
them; sometimes a tiny bit or two of moss may be found added, and
often the fine thread-like flower-stems of grass. Interiorly they are
generally lined with excessively fine grass. In one or two nests very
fine black fern-roots are intermingled with the grass lining. The
nests vary a good deal in size, but are all extremely compact, and
while some are decidedly massive, nearly an inch thick at bottom,
others are scarcely a quarter of this in thickness beneath. In one the
cavity is 2·5 inches broad by 3 long, and fully 2 deep; in another it
is about 2·5 inches in diameter by scarcely 1·25 inches in depth. In
one nest four fresh eggs were found; in another three fully incubated
ones. The nests were suspended at heights of from 10 to 30 feet from
the ground.
The eggs sent by Mr. Gammie very much recall the eggs of _Niltava_ and
others of the Flycatchers. They are moderately elongated ovals, in
some cases slightly pyriform, in others somewhat pointed towards the
small end. The shell is fine and compact, smooth and silky to the
touch, but they have but little gloss. The ground-colour varies from
a pale pinkish fawn to a pale salmon-pink, and they exhibit round
the large end a feeble more or less imperfect and irregular zone of
darker-coloured cloudy spots, in some cases reddish, in some rather
inclining to purple, which zone is more or less involved in a haze
of the same colour, but slightly darker than the rest of the
ground-colour of the egg.
The eggs vary in length from 0·76 to 0·88, and in breadth from 0·6 to
0·64. The average of fifteen eggs is 0·82 by 0·61.