Part 32

I have myself taken several, and have had a great many nests sent to me. With rare exceptions all belonged to one type. The bird selects a patch of dense fine-stemmed grass, from 18 inches to 2 feet in height, and, as a rule, standing in a moist place; in this, at the height of from 6 to 8 inches from the ground, the nest is constructed; the sides are formed by the blades and stems of the grass, _in situ_, closely tacked and caught together with cobwebs and very fine silky vegetable fibre. This is done for a length of from 2 to nearly 3 inches, and, as it were, a narrow tube, from 1 to 1·5 in diameter, formed in the grass. To this a bottom, from 4 to 6 inches above the surface of the ground, is added, a few of the blades of the grass being bent across, tacked and woven together with cobwebs and fine vegetable fibre. The whole interior is then closely felted with silky down, in Upper India usually that of the mudar (_Calotropis hamiltoni_). The nest thus constructed forms a deep and narrow purse, about 3 inches in depth, an inch in diameter at top, and 1·5 at the broadest part below. The tacking together of the stems of the grass is commonly continued a good deal higher up on one side than on the other, and it is through or between the untacked stems opposite to this that the tiny entrance exists. Of course above the nest the stems and blades of the grass, meeting together, completely hide it. The dimensions above given are those of the interior of the nest; its exterior dimensions cannot be given. The bird tacks together not merely the few stems absolutely necessary to form a side to the nest, but most of the stems all round, decreasing the extent of attachment as they recede from the nest-cavity. It does this, too, very irregularly; on one side of the nest perhaps no stem more than an inch distant from the interior surface of the nest will be found in any way bound up in the fabric, while on the opposite side perhaps stems fully 3 inches distant, together with all the intermediate ones, will be found more or less webbed together. Occasionally, but rarely, I have found a nest of a different type. Of these one was built amongst the stems of a common prickly labiate marsh-plant which has white and mauve flowers. There was a straggling framework of fine grass, firmly netted together with cobwebs, and a very scanty lining of down. The nest was egg-shaped, and the aperture on one side near the top. Mr. Brooks, I believe, once obtained a similar one; but the vast majority of the others that any of us have ever got have been of the type first described, which corresponds closely with Passler's account.

Five is the usual complement of eggs; at any rate I have notes of more than a dozen nests that contained this number, and in more than half the cases the eggs were partly incubated. I have no record of more than five, and though I have any number of notes of nests containing one, two, three, and four eggs, yet these latter in almost all these cases were fresh.

Mr. Blyth says that this species is "remarkable for the beautiful construction of its nest, _sewing_ together a number of growing stems and leaves of grass, with a delicate pappus which forms also the lining, and laying four or five translucent white eggs, with reddish-brown spots, more numerous and forming a ring at the large end, very like those of _Orthotomus sutorius_. It abounds in suitable localities throughout the country."

I must here note that Mr. Blyth never paid special attention to eggs, or he would have hardly said this, because the character of the markings are essentially different. Those of the Tailor-bird are typically _blotchy_, of the present species _speckly_.

Colonel W. Vincent Legge writes to me from Ceylon that "in the Western Province it breeds from May until September, and constructs its nest either in paddy-fields or in guinea-grass plots attached to bungalows."

The nest is so beautiful and so neatly constructed that perhaps a short description of it will not be out of place. A framework of cotton or other fibrous material is formed round two or three upright stalks, about 2 feet from the ground, the material being sewn into the grass and passed from one stalk to the other until a complete net is made. This takes the bird from one to two days to construct[A]. Several blades, belonging to the stalks round which the cotton is passed, are then bent down and interlaced across to form a bottom on which, and inside the cotton network, a neat little nest of fine strips of grass torn off from the blade is built; this is most beautifully lined with cotton or other downy substance, which appears to be plastered with the saliva of the bird, until it takes the appearance and texture of soft felt.

[Footnote A: Numbers of these birds used to build in a guinea-grass field attached to my bungalow at Colombo, and I had full opportunity of watching the construction of the nest on many occasions.--W.V.L.]

"The average dimensions of the interior or cup are 2 inches in depth by 1¼ in breadth. The whole structure is generally completed in about five days, and the first egg laid on the fifth or sixth day from the commencement. The number of eggs varies from two to four, most nests containing three. The time of incubation is, as a rule, from nine to eleven days.

"I have found but little variation in the eggs of this species either as regards size or colour. They are white or pale greenish white, spotted and blotched in a zone round the larger end with red and reddish grey, a few spots extending towards the point: axis 0·63 inch; diameter 0·51 inch.

"From close observation I can certify that this and many other small birds do not here sit during the daytime. I scarcely ever found a _Cisticola_ on the nest between sunrise and sunset,"

Colonel E.A. Butler writing from Deesa says:--"The Rufous Fantail-Warbler breeds in the plains during the monsoon, making a long bottle-shaped nest of silky-white vegetable down, with an entrance at the top, in a tuft of coarse grass a few inches from the ground. I have taken nests on the following dates:--

"July 29, 1875. A nest containing 4 fresh eggs. Aug. 1, 1876. " " 5 fresh eggs. Aug. 5, 1876. " " 4 fresh eggs. Aug. 5, 1876. " " 3 fresh eggs. Aug. 5, 1876. " " 4 fresh eggs. Aug. 5, 1876. " " 5 fresh eggs. Aug. 7, 1876. " " 5 fresh eggs. Aug. 8, 1876. " " 4 fresh eggs."

And he adds the following note:--"Belgaum, 22nd July, 1879. Four fresh eggs. Same locality, numerous other nests in August and September."

Major C.T. Bingham notes:--"I have not yet observed this bird at Delhi. At Allahabad I procured one nest in the beginning of March, shooting the birds. The nest was made of very fine dry grass, and contained four small white eggs, speckled thickly with minute points of brick-red. The average of the four eggs is 0·60 by 0·41 inch."

Mr. Cripps informs us that in Eastern Bengal this bird is very common and a permanent resident. Eggs are found from the beginning of May to the end of June, in grass-jungle almost on the ground. The nest is a deep cup, externally of fine grasses, internally of the downy tops of the sun-grass.

In the Deccan, Messrs. Davidson and Wenden state that it is "common in all grass-lands. It breeds in the rainy season."

Mr. Oates, writing on the breeding of this bird in Pegu, says:--"The majority of birds begin laying at the commencement of June, and probably nests may be found throughout the rains. I procured a nest on the 2nd of November, a very late date I imagine. It contained four eggs."

I have taken the eggs of this bird myself on many occasions. I have had them sent me with the nest and bird by Mr. Brooks from Etawah, and Mr. F.R. Blewitt from Jhansi. From first to last I have seen fully fifty authentic eggs of this species. All were of one and the same type, and that type widely different from any one of those that Dr. Bree, following European ornithologists, figures. Dr. Bree's three figures all represent a perfectly spotless egg--one pink, the other bluish white, and the third a pretty dark bluish green. Our eggs, on the contrary, are _spotted_; the ground is white with, when fresh and unblown, a delicate pink hue, due not to the shell itself, but to its contents, which partially show through it. Occasionally the white ground has a _faint_ greenish tinge.

_Every_ egg is spotted, and most densely so towards the large end, with, as a rule, excessively minute red, reddish-purple, and pale purple specks, thus resembling, though smaller, more glossy, and far less densely speckled, the eggs of _Franklinia buchanani_. These are beyond all question the eggs of our Indian species, and the only type of them that I have yet observed; but the question remains--Is our Indian _Prinia cursitans_, Franklin, really identical with the European _C. schoenicola_, Bonaparte? [A]--and this can only be settled by careful comparison of an enormous series of good specimens of each bird. For my part I personally have little doubts as to the identity of the two. At the same time differences in the eggs may indicate difference of species. Thus of the closely allied _C. volitans_, Swinhoe, the latter gentleman informs us that "the eggs of our bird vary from three to five, are thin and fragile, and of a pale clear greenish blue"[B]. He called it _C. schoenicola_ when he wrote, but he really referred to the Formosan bird, which he has since separated.

[Footnote A: The Indian and European birds are now generally allowed to be perfectly identical, notwithstanding the alleged difference in the colour of the eggs; and Mr. Hume is now, I think, of this opinion.--ED.]

[Footnote B: But _C. volitans_, or the closely allied race which occurs in Pegu, assuredly lays spotted eggs. I found two nests of this bird, both with spotted eggs _vide_ (p. 236).--ED.]

The eggs of course vary somewhat. Of one nest I wrote at the time I found it--"The eggs are a rather short oval, slightly pointed at one end, with a white ground, thickly sprinkled with numerous specks and tiny spots of pale brownish red. They measured ·58 by ·46." Of another I say--"The ground had a faint pearly tinge, and there was a well-marked, though, irregular and ill-defined, zone towards the large end, formed by the agglomeration there of multitudinous specks, which in places were almost confluent." Of another set--"The eggs were much glossier and had a china-white ground; but instead of a multitude of small specks over the whole surface, they had nearly the whole colouring-matter gathered together at the large end in a cap of bold, almost maroon-red spots, only a very few spots of the same colour being scattered over the rest of the egg."

The eggs measure from ·53 to ·62 in length, and from ·43 to ·48 in breadth; but the average dimensions of a large number measured were ·59 by ·46.

382. Franklinia gracilis (Frankl.). _Franklin's Wren-Warbler_.

Prinia gracilis, _Frankl. Jerd. B. Ind._ ii. p. 172; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 536. Prinia hodgsoni, _Bl., Jerd. t.c._ p. 173; _Hume, t.c._ no. 538.

I have never myself succeeded in finding a nest of Franklin's Wren-Warbler, but my friend Mr. F.R. Blewitt has sent me no less than forty nests and eggs, with the parents; so that, although the eggs belong to two, I might even say three, very different types, I entertain no doubt that he is correct in assigning them to the same species, the more so as, although the eggs vary, the nests are identical. He has sent me several notes in regard to this species. He says:--"On the 1st July, three miles south of the village of Doongurgurh in the Raipoor District, I found a nest of Franklin's Wren-Warbler, containing three fresh eggs. It was on rocky ground between a footpath and a water-course, about 2 feet from the ground, and firmly sewn to a single leaf of a murori plant. The nest was constructed exclusively of very fine grass, with spiders' web affixed in places to the exterior. It was somewhat cup-shaped, 3·3 inches in depth and 2·4 in breadth externally. The egg-cavity was about 1·4 in diameter, and about the same depth. The eggs were a delicate pale unspotted blue.

"About 100 yards from the first, a second precisely similar, and similarly situated, nest of this same species was found, which contained three hard-set eggs, exactly similar in shape, texture, and ground-colour to those in the first nest, but everywhere excessively finely and thickly speckled with red, the specks exhibiting a strong tendency to coalesce in a zone round the large end.

"On the 12th and 13th July we obtained ten nests of Franklin's Wren-Warbler, all in the neighbourhood of Doongurgurh. From what I have seen, I gather that this species breeds from the middle of June to the middle of August in this part of the country. They appear to resort to tracts at some little elevation, where the murori and kydia bushes are abundant, and where grass grows rapidly in the early part of the rains. The nests, very ingeniously made, are invariably sewn to one or two leaves in the centre of one of the above-named bushes, the entrance above, just as in the nest of an _Orthotomus_. They are placed at heights of from a foot to 3 feet from the ground. Fine grass, vegetable fibres, and other soft materials are chiefly used in their construction, a little cobweb being often added. The eggs are laid daily, and four is the normal number, though three hard-set ones are sometimes found. The nest is prepared annually. As far as I know they have only one brood. Both parents unite in building the nest and in hatching and feeding the young.

"Of the ten nests now taken four contained speckled and six unspeckled eggs. The two types are never found in the same nest. I send all the nests, eggs, and birds."

Dr. Jerdon says:--"I found the nest of this species at Saugor, very like that of the Tailor-bird but smaller, made of cotton, wool, and various soft vegetable fibres, and occasionally bits of cloth, and I invariably found it sewn to one leaf of the kydia, so common in the jungles there. The eggs were pale blue, with some brown or reddish spots often rarely visible."

Colonel E.A. Butler writes from Deesa:--

"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.

383. Franklinia rufescens (Blyth). _Beavan's Wren-Warbler_.

Prinia beavani, _Wald., Hume, cat._ no. 538 bis.

Mr. Oates, who found the nest of this Warbler in Pegu, says:--"June 29th. Found a nest sewn into a broad soft leaf of a weed in forest about 2 feet from the ground. The edges of the leaf are drawn together and fastened by white vegetable fibres. The nest is composed entirely of fine grass, no other material entering into its composition. For further security the nest is stitched to the leaves in a few places; the depth of the nest is about 3 inches, and internal diameter all the way down about 1½. Eggs three, very glossy, pale blue, with specks and dashes of pale reddish brown, chiefly at the larger end, where they form a cap. Size ·58, ·62, ·61, by ·47."

Mr. Mandelli sends me a regular Tailor-bird's nest as that of this species. It was found below Yendong in Native Sikhim on the 1st May, and contained three fresh eggs. The nest itself is a beautiful little cup, composed of silky vegetable down and excessively fine grass-stems, and a very little black hair firmly felted together, and is placed between two living leaves of a sapling neatly sewn together at the margins with bright yellow silk.

The eggs are rather elongated, very regular ovals. The shell stout for the size of the egg, but very fine and compact, and with a moderate gloss. The ground-colour is a very delicate pale greenish blue. At or round the larger end there is very generally a mottled cap or zone (more commonly the latter) of duller or brighter brownish red, while irregular blotches, streaks, spots, and specks of the same colour, but usually a slightly paler shade, are more or less sparsely scattered over the rest of the surface of the egg, sometimes they are almost wholly wanting. Occasionally the zone is at the small end.

The eggs measure from 0·60 to 0·62 in length, by 0·43 to 0·48 in breadth; but the average of six eggs is 0·61 by 0·45.

384. Franklinia buchanani (Blyth). _The Rufous-fronted Wren-Warbler_.

Franklinia buchanani (_Blyth), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 186; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 551.

The Rufous-fronted Wren-Warbler breeds throughout Central India, the Central Provinces, the North-western Provinces, the Punjab, and Rajpootana. It affects chiefly the drier and warmer tracts, and, though said to have been obtained in the Nepal Terai, has never been met with by _me_ either there or in any very moist, swampy locality. The breeding-season extends from the end of May until the beginning of September.

The nests, according to my experience, are always placed at heights of from a foot to 4 feet from the ground, in low scrub-jungle or bushes. They vary greatly in size and shape, according to position. Some are oblate spheroids with the aperture near the top, some are purse-like and suspended, and some are regular cups. One of the former description measured externally 5 inches in diameter one way by 3¼ inches the other. One of the suspended nests was 7 inches long by 3 wide, and one of the cup-shaped nests was nearly 4 inches in diameter and stood, perhaps, at most 2½ inches high. The egg-cavity in the different nests varies from 1¾ to 2¼ inches in diameter, and from less than 2 to fully 3 inches in depth. Externally the nest is very loosely and, generally, raggedly constructed of very fine grass-stems and tow-like vegetable fibre used in different proportions in different nests; those in which grass is chiefly used being most ragged and straggling, and those in which most vegetable fibre has been made use of being neatest and most compact. In all the nests that I have seen the egg-cavity has been lined with something very soft. In many of the nests the lining is composed of small felt-like pieces of some dull salmon-coloured fungus, with which the whole interior is closely plastered; in others there is a dense lining of soft silky vegetable down; and in others the down and fungus are mingled. They lay from four to five eggs, never more than this latter number according to my experience.

"At the end of June 1867," writes Mr. Brooks, "I took two nests of this bird at Chunar in low ber bushes about 2 feet from the ground. They were little spheres of fine grass with a hole at the side. One contained four eggs; these were of a greyish-white ground or nearly pure white, finely speckled over with reddish brown, some of the eggs exhibiting a tendency to form a zone round the large end, and others with a complete zone."

"At Sambhur," Mr. Adam says, "this Wren-Warbler is always found wherever there are low bushes. It breeds just before the rains, but I have not recorded the date. I had a nest with the bird and five eggs sent to me. The eggs are pale bluish white, with reddish-brown spots and freckles all over them."

"During July, August, and the early part of September," remarks Mr. W. Blewitt, "I found a great number of the nests and eggs of this bird in the jungle-preserves of Hansie and its neighbourhood. The nests, of which I have already sent you several, were mostly in ber (_Zizyphus jujuba_) and hinse (_Capparis aphylla_) bushes, at heights of from 3 to 4 feet from the ground. Five was the largest number of eggs that I found in any one nest."