Burnesia lepida (_Blyth), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 185.
Burnesia gracilis, _Rüpp., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 550.
I have never happened to meet with the nest of the Streaked
Wren-Warbler, and all the information I possess in regard to its
nidification I owe to others.
The late Mr. Anderson remarked:--"Although this species was far
from uncommon, I found it very local and confined entirely to the
tamarisk-covered islands and 'churs' along the Ganges.
"The first nest was taken on the 13th March last, and contained three
well-incubated eggs; of these I saved only one specimen, which is now
in the collection of Mr. Brooks. The second was found on the following
day, and contained two callow young and one perfectly fresh egg.
"The nest is domed over, having an entrance at the side; and the
cavity is comfortably lined, or rather felted, with the down of the
madar plant. It is fixed, somewhat after the fashion of that of the
Reed-Warbler, in the centre of a dense clump of surpat grass, about 2
feet above the ground. On the whole the structure is rather large
for so small a bird, and measures 6 inches in height by 4 inches in
breadth.
"But while the _nest_ corresponds exactly with Canon Tristram's
description[A] of those taken by him in Palestine, there are
differences, oologically speaking, which induce me to hope that our
Indian bird may yet be restored to specific distinction[B]. In
the first place, my single eggs from each nest have a _green_
ground-colour, and are covered all over with reddish-brown spots. Now
Mr. Tristram describes his Palestine specimens as 'richly coloured
_pink_ eggs, with a zone of darker red near the larger end, and
in shape and colour resembling some of the _Prinia_ group.' Is it
possible for the same birds to lay such widely different eggs? If I
had taken only one specimen, it might have been looked upon as a mere
variety. Again, our Indian bird lays three eggs, and I have never
seen the parent birds feeding more than this number of young ones,
occasionally only two. Mr. Tristram, _per contra_, mentions having met
with as many as five and six. The egg is certainly the prettiest, and
one of the smallest, I have ever seen; indeed, I found it too small to
risk measurement."
[Footnote A: Tristram on the Ornithology of Palestine, P. 2. S. 1864,
p. 437; Ibis, 865, pp. 82, 83.]
[Footnote B: The two birds are now considered distinct by all
ornithologists.--ED.]
He adds:--"Since writing the above, which appeared in 'The Ibis,' I
have discovered that this species breeds in September and October,
as well as in February and March, so some of them probably have two
broods in the year. I took a nest on the 9th October at Futtegurh,
which contained two callow young and one (_fresh_) egg, which I send
you, and which is exactly similar to all the others I have taken from
time to time."
The egg sent me by Mr. Anderson is a very broad oval in shape, a good
deal compressed however, and pointed towards the small end. The shell
is very fine and has a decided gloss. In colouring the egg is exactly
like those of some of the Blackbirds--a pale green ground, profusely
freckled and streaked with a bright, only slightly brownish, red; the
markings are densest round the large end, where they form a broad,
nearly confluent, well-marked, but imperfect and irregular, zone. It
measures 0·55 by 0·41.
Colonel C.H.T. Marshall says:--"The Streaked Wren-Warbler breeds in
great numbers near Delhi in March; Mr. C.T. Bingham has found several
of them in the clumps of surpat grass that had been cut within three
feet of the ground on the alluvial land of the Jumna. It was when out
with him in the end of March 1876 that I first saw the nest of this
species. The locality of the nest is exactly that described by Mr.
Anderson; it is oval in shape, with a large side entrance near the
top; it is built of fine grass and seed-down, no cobweb being employed
in the structure; it is loosely made, and there are always a few
feathers in the egg-cavity. The whereabouts is generally pointed out
by the cock bird, who, seated on the top of the highest blade of grass
he can find near where his hen is sitting, pours out with untiring
energy his feeble monotonous song, little knowing that by so doing he
has betrayed the spot where he has fixed his nest to the marauder.
The eggs, of which I have seen about fifteen or twenty, answer the
description given in 'Stray Feathers' exactly."
Major C.T. Bingham tells us:--"Between the 12th and 31st March this
year I found ten nests of this bird, which is very common in the
grass-covered land of the Jumna. These nests were all alike, of fine
dry grass mixed with the down of the surpat, which also thickly lined
the inside. In shape the nests are blunt ovals, with a tiny hole
for entrance a little above the centre. Seven out of the ten nests
contained four eggs each, the rest three each. The eggs in colour are
a pale yellowish white with a tinge of green, thickly speckled with
dashes rather than spots of rusty red, tending in some to form a cap,
in others a zone round the large end. The average of twenty eggs
measured is 0·53 by 0·44 inch. The nests were all, with one exception,
supported by stems of the grass being worked into the sides. The one
exception was a nest I found in the fork of a tamarisk bush. It is not
a difficult nest to find, for when you are in the vicinity of one, one
of the birds will flit about the stems of the surrounding clumps of
grass and above you freely, opening its tiny mouth absurdly wide, but
giving forth the feeblest of feeble sounds."
Writing on the Avifauna of Mt. Abu and N. Guzerat, Colonel E.A. Butler
says:--"I found a nest in a tussock of coarse grass in the sandy bed
of a river, amongst a number of tamarisk-bushes, on the 8th July,
1875, in the neighbourhood of Deesa. It was composed of fine dry
fibrous roots and grass-stems exteriorly, and lined with silky
vegetable down. It was a long bottled-shaped structure with a small
entrance on one side. The nest, eggs, situation, locality, &c. all
agree so exactly with the descriptions quoted by Dr. Jerdon and with
Mr. Anderson's note in 'Nests and Eggs,' _Rough Draft_, that I should
have found it difficult to avoid copying these two gentlemen in
describing my own nest.
"The nest contained three hard-set eggs and one young one just
hatched."
Referring to its occurrence in the Eastern Narra District, Mr. Doig
tells us:--"This little Warbler is very common. I took the first nest
in March and again in May; they build in stunted tamarisk-bushes; the
nest is circular dome-shaped, with the entrance on one side the top,
the inside being very beautifully and softly lined with the pappus of
grass-seeds. Four is the usual number of eggs in one nest."
The Blackbird type of egg above described is by no means the commonest
one; the great mass of the eggs have the ground greyish, greenish,
or pinkish white, and they are very thickly and finely freckled and
speckled all over, but most densely about the large end, with a
slightly brownish, rarely a slightly purplish grey. Occasionally when
the markings are very dense in a cap at the large end there is a
distinct purplish-grey tinge there, and on the rest of the surface
of the egg the markings are somewhat less thickly set, leaving small
portions of the ground-colour clearly visible. Typically the eggs are
moderately broad ovals, a little compressed towards the small end, and
though none are very glossy, the great majority have a fair amount of
gloss.
463. Prinia flaviventris (Deless.). _The Yellow-bellied
Wren-Warbler_.
Prinia flaviventris (_Deless.) Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 169: _Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E._ no. 532.
Of the Yellow-bellied Wren-Warbler's nidification I know personally
nothing.
Tickell describes the nest as pensile but quite open, being a
hemisphere with one side prolonged, by which it is suspended from a
twig. The eggs, he says, are bright brick-red without a spot.
Mr. H.C. Parker tells me that "this bird breeds in the Salt-Water
Lake, or rather on the swampy banks of the principal canals that
intersect it. The nest is nearly always placed on an ash-leaved
shrub-like plant growing on the banks of the canal and overhanging the
water. One taken on the 26th July, 1873, containing four nearly fresh
eggs, was almost touching the water at high tide. The male has the
habit, when the female is sitting, of hopping to the extreme point
of a tall species of cane-like grass which grows abundantly in these
swamps, whence he gives forth a rather pleasing song, erecting his
tail at the same time, after which he drops into the jungle and is
seen no more. It is almost impossible to make him show himself again."
The nest, which I owe to Mr. Parker, and which was found in the
neighbourhood of the Salt-Water Lake, Calcutta, on the 26th July, is
of an oval shape, very obtuse at both ends, measuring externally 4
inches in length and about 2¾ inches in diameter. The aperture, which
is near the top of the nest, is oval, and measures about 1 inch by 1½
inch. The nest is fixed against the side of two or three tiny leafy
twigs, to which it is bound lightly in one or two places with grass
and vegetable fibre; and two or three leafy lateral twiglets are
incorporated into the sides of the nest, so that when fresh it must
have been entirely hidden by leaves. The nest was in an upright
position, the major axis perpendicular to the horizon. It is a very
thin, firm, close basket-work of fine grass, flower-stalks, and
vegetable fibre, and has no lining, though the interior surface of
the nest is more closely woven and of still finer materials than the
outside. The cavity is nearly 2½ inches deep, measuring from the lower
edge of the entrance, and is about 2 inches in diameter.
During this present year (1874) Mr. Parker obtained several more
nests of this species, all built in the low jungle that fringes the
mud-banks of the congeries of channels and creeks that are known in
Calcutta by the name of the "Salt Lake."
This jungle consists chiefly of the blue-flowered holly-leaved
_Acanthus ilicifolia_ and of the trailing semi-creeper-like _Derris
scandens_. It is in amongst the drooping twigs of the latter that the
nest is invariably made.
The nests vary a good deal in shape; some are regular cylinders
rounded off at both ends, with the aperture on one side above the
centre--a small oval entrance neatly worked. Such a nest is about 4.5
inches in length externally from top to bottom, and 2·75 in diameter;
the aperture 1·3 in height, and barely 1·0 in width.
Others are still more egg-shaped, with a similar aperture near the
top, and others are more purse-like. The material used appears to be
always much the same--fine grass-stems intermingled with blades of
grass, and here and there dry leaves of some rush, a little seed-down,
scraps of herbaceous plants, and the like; the interior, always of the
finest grass-stems, neatly arranged and curved to the shape of the
cavity. The nests are firmly attached to the drooping twigs, to and
between which they are suspended, sometimes by line vegetable fibre,
but more commonly by cobwebs and silk from cocoons, a good deal of
both of which are generally to be seen wound about the surface of the
nest near the points of suspension or attachment.
Four appears to be the full number of the eggs. Mr. Doig, writing from
Sind, says:--"This bird is tolerably common all along the Narra, but
as it keeps in very thick jungle it is not often seen unless looked
for. I took my first nest on the 12th, and my second on the 17th of
May. This evidently is the second brood, as I noticed on the same day
a lot of young birds which must have been fully six weeks old. One
nest was lined with horsehair and fine grasses. Four was the normal
number of eggs."
Mr. Gates writes:--"The Yellow-bellied Wren-Warbler is very abundant
throughout Lower Pegu in suitable localities. In the plains between
the Sittang and Pegu rivers they are constant residents, breeding
freely from May to August and September. In Rangoon also, all round
the Timber Depot at Kemandine, and in the low-lying land between the
town proper and Monkey Point, they are very numerous."
The eggs are of the well-known _Prinia_ type--broad regular ovals, of
a nearly uniform mahogany-red, and very glossy. To judge from the
few specimens I have seen, they average a good deal smaller, and are
somewhat less deeply coloured, than those of _P. socialis_. They vary
from 0·52 to 0·6 in length, and from 0·43 to 0·48 in breadth.