"July 26, 1876. A nest containing 3 fresh eggs.
Aug. 1, 1876. " " 4 fresh eggs.
Aug. 15, 1876. " " 2 fresh eggs.
Sept. 3, 1876. " " 4 incubated eggs.
"All of the above nests were exactly alike, being composed of fine dry
grass without any lining, felted here and there exteriorly with small
lumps of woolly vegetable down, and built between two leaves carefully
sewn to the nest in the same way as the nests of _Orthotomus
sutorius_. The eggs, three or four in number, are white, sparingly
speckled with light reddish chestnut, with a cap more or less dense
of the same markings at the large end. All of the eggs in the
above-mentioned nests were of this type. I found the nests in a
grass Beerh near Deesa, studded over with low ber bushes (_Zizyphus
jujuba_), generally about 2 or 3 feet from the ground, and in similar
situations to those selected by _Prinia socialis_, often amongst dry
nullahs overgrown with low bushes and long grass."
Mr. Vidal notes in his list of the Birds of the South Konkan:--"Common
in mangrove-swamps, reeds, hedgerows, thickets, and bush-jungle
throughout the district. Breeds during the rainy months."
Mr. Oates writes from Pegu:--"Nest with three fresh eggs on the 19th
August; no details appear necessary except the colour of the eggs,
since this bird appears to lay two kinds of eggs. My eggs are very
glossy, of a light blue speckled with minute dots of reddish brown,
more thickly so at the large end than elsewhere."
The nests sent by Mr. Blewitt are regular Tailor-birds' nests,
composed chiefly of very fine grass, about the thickness of fine human
hair, with no special lining, carefully sewn with cobwebs, silk from
cocoons, or wool, into one or two leaves, which often completely
envelop it, so as to leave no portion of the true nest visible.
The eggs belong to at least two very distinct types. Both are
typically rather slender ovals, a good deal compressed towards one
end; but in both somewhat broader and more or less pyriform varieties
occur. In both the shell is exquisitely fine and glossy; in some
specimens it is excessively glossy. In both the ground-colour is a
very delicate pale greenish blue, _occasionally_ so pale that
the ground is all but white--in one type entirely unspeckled and
unspotted, in the other finely and thickly speckled everywhere, and
towards the large end more or less spotted, with brownish or purplish
red. The markings are densest towards the large end, where they either
actually form, or exhibit a strong tendency to form, a more or less
conspicuous speckled, semi-confluent zone.
Out of fifty-six eggs, twenty-one belong to the latter type. As in
_Dicrurus ater_, the two types never appear to be found in the same
nest; but the nests in which the two types are found are precisely
similar, and the parent birds are identical.
In length the eggs vary from 0·53 to 0·62, and in width from 0·4 to
0·45; but the average of fifty-six eggs is 0·58 by 0·42. There is no
difference whatever in the size of the two types.