Pericrocotus roseus (_Vieill._), _Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 422; _Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 275.
The only one of my contributors who appears to have taken the eggs
of the Rosy Minivet is Colonel C.H.T. Marshall. Mr. R. Thompson
says:--"They breed in the warmer valleys of Kumaon, up to an elevation
of some 5000 feet, in May and June;" but he adds: "have never got down
the nests."
Colonel Marshall, writing from Murree, says:--"The Rosy Minivet builds
a beautifully little shallow cup-shaped nest, the outer edge being
quite narrow and pointed. The external covering of the nest is fine
pieces of lichen fastened on with cobwebs. It was found on the 12th of
June, and contained three fresh eggs, white, with greyish-brown spots
and blotches sparsely scattered about the larger end; the length is
0·8 by 0·55 inch; 5000 feet up."
The nest, which I owe to this gentleman, is externally a short section
of a cylinder, rather than a cup, the walls standing up outside almost
perpendicularly. It is 2·5 inches in diameter and nearly 1·75 in
height. The rim of the nest is ¼ inch wide, and the cavity, a shallow
cup, 2 inches wide by scarcely an inch deep; the walls of the nest
increase in thickness as they approach the base.
Externally the whole surface is _entirely_ covered by small scales of
lichen, firmly bound into their respective places by gossamer threads;
internally the nest is a very loosely put together basket-work of
excessively fine twigs and grass-stems not thicker than common
needles. A morsel or two of moss have become involved in the fabric,
as well as two fine blades of grass; but there is no lining, and the
eggs are obviously laid upon the soft loose basket frame of the nest.
The egg which accompanied the nest is a regular oval, slightly
compressed towards one end. The ground-colour is pale greenish white
entirely devoid of gloss. The egg is richly blotched, spotted, and
speckled (most densely so towards the larger end) with reddish brown
and greenish purple, there being two conspicuously different shades
(a much darker and a much lighter, the latter of which appears like
subsurface tints) of each of these colours. This egg measures 0·82 by
0·6 inch nearly.
Another egg of the same clutch was less richly coloured, the markings
being merely brown, with scarcely a perceptible reddish tinge, and
dull mostly inky, but here and there somewhat reddish, purple. The
markings, too, were fewer in number, but there was a more marked
tendency for these to form a zone about the larger end.
In another clutch the markings were almost entirely confined to a
dense zone round the larger end about a third of the way up from the
middle of the egg. In this zone they were so densely set as to be
quite confluent, and they consisted of yellowish brown and inky
purple.
Mr. J.R. Cripps found the nest of this Minivet in the Bhaman
tea-garden, in the Dibrugarh District of Assam, on the 31st May, 1879.
The nest contained three eggs, and was placed on the upper side of
a large lateral branch of a tree that grew on the main garden road,
about 15 feet from the ground.
Seven eggs of this bird vary in length from 0·75 to 0·86, and in
breadth from 0·58 to 0·6.