The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds Part 12

The eggs vary from 125 to 135 in length, and from 089 to 092 in breadth.

104. Argya earlii (Blyth). _The Striated Babbler_.

Chatarrhaea earlii (_Blyth), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 68; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 439.

The Striated Babbler breeds in suitable localities throughout Continental India, from Sindh to Tipperah and a.s.sam, as also in Burmah. Reedy-margined lakes, ca.n.a.ls and perennial streams are its favourite haunts, and wherever within the limits above indicated these abound, and the locality is moist and warm, _A. earlii_ is pretty sure to be met with.

They lay twice during the year, between the latter end of March and the early part of September, building a neat, compact, and rather ma.s.sive cup-shaped nest, either between the close-growing reeds, to three or more of which it is firmly bound, or in some little bush or shrub more or less surrounded by high reed-gra.s.s. The broad leaves and stringy roots of the reed, common gra.s.s, and gra.s.s-roots are the materials of which it generally constructs its nest, which varies much in size, according to the situation and fineness of the material used.

I have seen them composed almost wholly of reed-leaves, fully 7 inches in diameter and 5 in height, and again built entirely of fine gra.s.s-stems not more than 4 inches across and 3 inches in height.

When semi-suspended between reeds, they are always smaller and more compact, while when placed in a fork of a low bush they are larger and more straggling. The cavity (always neatly finished off, but very rarely regularly lined, and then only with very fine gra.s.s-stems or roots) is usually about 3 inches in diameter by 2 inches in depth.

Colonel G.F.L. Marshall remarks:--"In the Saharunpoor District _A.

earlii_ commences building about the middle of March, and the young are hatched towards the middle of April. The nest is usually placed in the middle of a tuft of Sarkerry gra.s.s, and sometimes in a bush or small tree, generally 3 or 4 feet from the ground. It is a deep cup-shaped structure, rather neatly made of gra.s.s without lining, and woven in with the stems if in a clump of gra.s.s, or firmly fixed in a fork if in a bush or low tree. The interior diameter is about 3 inches, and the depth nearly 2 inches. The eggs, four in number, are of a clear blue colour without spots of any kind. In shape they are oval, rather thinner at one end; the sh.e.l.l is smooth and thin. The eggs are of the same colour, but considerably larger than those of _Argya caudata. Argya earlii_ breeds commonly in the Sub-Siwalik District of the Doab; it seems fond of water, as most of the nests I have found were close to the ca.n.a.l bank. It is gregarious even in the breeding-season; small flocks of seven or eight keeping together, fluttering in and out of the low bushes, but seldom alighting on the ground, and occasionally making a noisy chattering cry, especially when disturbed."

From the Pegu District Mr. Oates writes:--"I found two nests on the 24th May, one quite empty though finished, the other containing three eggs.

"The nests were placed a few feet apart in an immensely thick patch of elephant-gra.s.s, the undergrowth being fine, once tall, but now dead, gra.s.s. It was upon this dead stuff, which in May is much flattened down, that I found the nests. They were not attached to anything, but simply laid in a depressed platform about a foot above the ground, in among the thickest of the stalks of elephant-gra.s.s.

"The nest is a bulky structure, some 6 or 8 inches in external diameter, and 4 inches in height, composed chiefly of coa.r.s.e reeds, becoming finer interiorly till the egg-cup is reached, where the gra.s.ses employed are tolerably fine and neatly interwoven. The cavity itself is more than a hemisphere, the diameter being 3 inches and the depth about 2 inches.

"The eggs are of a beautiful blue colour, rather pointed at one end."

Colonel Tickell has the following note on the nidification of this species in the Asiatic Society Journal, 1848, p. 301:--

"_Burra phenga_.--Nest hemispherical, of gra.s.ses rather loosely interwoven; generally on bushes in jungle. Eggs two to four; rather lengthened shape; clear, full, verditer blue.--June."

Mr. J.R. Cripps writes of this bird in Eastern Bengal:--"Very common, and a permanent resident, keeping to gra.s.s-fields in small parties of seven to ten. Very noisy. On the 2nd December, 1877, I found a nest with three slightly-incubated eggs in a small babool bush which stood in a 'sone' gra.s.s-field. The nest was a deep cup, whose foundation was a few leaves over which sone-gra.s.s was woven rather loosely. Lining of fine gra.s.s-roots. The nest was placed in amongst some coa.r.s.e gra.s.s which grew up in the centre of the bush, and was three feet from the ground. External height 4, diameter 4, internal diameter 2, depth 2 inches. Both Messrs. Marshall and Hume in their works on 'Birds'

Nesting' give March and September as the two periods for these birds to lay, but the clutch I found were exceptionally late."

Mr. J. Inglis writes from Cachar:--"The Striated Reed-Babbler is exceedingly common during the whole year. It breeds from March onwards, making its nest in longish gra.s.s."

The eggs closely resemble those of _A. caudata_ both in colour and shape, but they are conspicuously larger. To judge from Hewitson's figure, for I have never seen the egg, they in shape, size, and colour closely resemble the eggs of _Accentor alpinus_, some I have being very slightly larger, and others exactly the same size as the figure referred to.

In length the eggs vary from 078 to 101, and in breadth from 065 to 075, but the average of a large series is 088 by 07.

105. Argya caudata (Dumeril). _The Common Babbler_.

Chatarrhaea caudata (_Dum.), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 67; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E_ no. 438.

The Common Babbler breeds throughout India, not, however, ascending any of our many mountain-ranges to any great elevation.

They lay pretty well all the year round; at any rate from early in March, to early in September their eggs are common. Mr. W. Blewitt took a nest at Hansie on the 3rd January, and single nests are recorded by others as found in October, December, and February. They certainly have two broods a year, and perhaps more, the first being hatched from March to May, the second from June to August.

They build in low th.o.r.n.y bushes, and occasionally in clumps of high gra.s.s, the nest being rarely more than 3 feet from the ground. The nest itself is cup-shaped, and composed of gra.s.s and roots, often unlined, at times lined with very fine gra.s.s-stems or horse-hair. As a rule, it is neatly and compactly built, with a deep cavity some 2 to 3 inches in diameter, and 175 to 225 in depth, but I have seen straggling, ragged, and comparatively shallow nests of this species, having an external diameter of fully 7 inches. Three is the normal number of the eggs, but four are occasionally met with.

Mr. Brooks says:--"This species builds in much the same sort of places as _A. malcolmi_, but it chooses a low thick bush, the nest not being more than 3 feet from the ground. Nest neatly built of gra.s.s, roots, hair, &c., and the eggs bright bluish green, very glossy, and much resembling those of _Accentor modularis_."

Mr. R.M. Adam remarks:--"I took a nest of this bird in Oudh on the 22nd April. It contained a young bird and one unhatched egg. The nest was made of gra.s.s not well worked together, and had a lining of finer gra.s.s. The ground-work was composed of twigs and stems of creepers interlaced. The exterior diameter of the nest measured 5 inches, and the egg-cavity was 2 inches deep. In one case this bird did not lay till the fifth day after the nest was finished. About Agra this bird breeds during July and August.

"This Bush-Babbler is very common about the Sambhur lake. I have noted it breeding from the beginning of March till the beginning of July.

Although this species generally prefers building in the hedges of p.r.i.c.kly-pear, I have taken the nests in orange-trees, the karounda, the babool, &c."

Messrs. Davidson and Wenden state that in the Deccan it is "very common and breeds."

Major C.T. Bingham says:--"This bird, uncommon at Allahabad, is plentiful here at Delhi. I found several nests between March and June, all of the Babbler type, deep cups, rather more firmly built than those of the preceding bird, but constructed like them of coa.r.s.e roots of gra.s.s, with finer ones for the inside. They are never placed at any great height from the ground, and generally in some th.o.r.n.y bush. I have found mostly three, rarely four eggs in any one nest."

Mr. Benjamin Aitken writes:--"I never saw the Common Babbler in Poona, and it certainly does not occur in Bombay. But it is very abundant on the arid plains of Berar, breeding in the low babool-bushes, where large numbers of its eggs are destroyed by lizards. I have found four eggs in a nest oftener than three."

Colonel Butler writes:--"The Common Babbler breeds in the neighbourhood of Deesa princ.i.p.ally during the monsoon; but I have found nests occasionally at other seasons of the year, as the following table of dates will show:--

"April 29, 1876. A nest containing 3 fresh eggs.

"May 16, 1876. " " 3 fresh eggs.

"May 21, 1876. " " 2 fresh eggs.

"Nov. 15, 1876. " " 4 young birds.

"I found numerous nests from the middle of July to the beginning of September. On the 26th July, 1876, I saw upwards of a dozen nests, some containing fresh eggs, and others incubated. In many instances they contained eggs of _Coccystes jacobinus_. The nest is usually placed 3 or 4 feet from the ground in low th.o.r.n.y bashes (_Zizyphus jujuba_ preferred) or in a tussock of sarpat gra.s.s. It is built of twigs, roots, gra.s.s, &c., loosely put together exteriorly but closely woven interiorly, the lining being composed of fine roots and gra.s.s-stems. The eggs vary in number from three to five."

Lieut. H.E. Barnes, writing of Rajputana, says:--"The Striated Bush-Babbler breeds from March to July. The nest is usually placed in a low th.o.r.n.y bush, and is composed of gra.s.s-roots and stems; it is deep cup-shaped, neatly and compactly built."

The eggs are typically of a moderately elongated oval shape, slightly compressed towards one end, but more or less spherical and pyriform varieties occur; and I have one specimen, a very long pointed egg, which, so far as size and shape go, might pa.s.s for an egg of _Cypselus affinis_; and though this is a peculiarly abnormal shape, I have others which somewhat approach it in form. The eggs are glossy, often brilliantly so, and of a delicate, pure, spotless, somewhat pale blue.

The shade of colour in this egg varies very little, and I have never met with either the very pale or very dark varieties common amongst the eggs of _C. canorus_ and occasionally found amongst those of _A.

malcolmi_. In colour, size, and shape they are not very unlike those of our English Hedge-Sparrow, whose early eggs formed the prize of our first boyish nesting-expeditions, but they are slightly larger and typically somewhat more elongated.

In length they vary from 075 to 092, and in breadth from 06 to 07; but the average of one hundred and fifteen eggs measured was 082 by 064.

107. Argya malcolmi (Sykes). _The Large Grey Babbler_.

Malacocercus malcolmi (_Sykes_), _Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 64.

Argya malcolmi (_Sykes_), _Hume_, _Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 436.

The Large Grey Babbler breeds throughout the central portions of both the Peninsula and Continent of India from the Nilghiris to the Dhoon.

It does not extend westwards to Sindh or the North-West Punjab, or eastwards far into Bengal Proper. In the Central and North-West Provinces it lays from early in March well into September, having at least two and, as I believe, often three broods.

It builds on low branches of small trees or in thick shrubs, at no great elevation from the ground, say at heights of from 4 to 10 feet, a somewhat loosely woven, but yet generally neat, cup-shaped nest, composed, as a rule, chiefly of gra.s.s-roots, but often with an admixture of thin sticks and gra.s.s. Generally there is no lining, but I have found nests scantily lined with very fine gra.s.s and even horse-hair. Even when, as is the rule, entirely unlined, the inside is finished off very nicely and smoothly. I have often seen ragged and untidy nests, but these are the exception. Externally the nest is some 5 or 6 inches in diameter and 3 or 4 inches in height; the cavity is from 3 to 4 inches across and from 2 to nearly 3 inches in depth.

Four is the normal number of the eggs laid, but I have several notes of finding five.

Mr. Brooks says:--"This species breeds in waste lands overgrown with scanty jungle. The nest is made of sticks, roots, gra.s.s, &c., is rather bulky, and is placed in some moderate-sized bush about 7 or 8 feet from the ground. The eggs are greenish blue, bluer and not so brightly coloured as those of _C. terricolor_."

Mr. R.M. Adam remarks:--"Near Muttra, on the 31st October, I found a pair of birds busy lining the interior of a nest which they had built in a plum-tree. At the Sambhur lake it is very common, and commences to breed about the end of March."

Writing from Kotagherry (Nilghiris), Miss c.o.c.kburn remarks:--"Their nests are built of a few twigs and roots, very loosely put together (on some low branch of a tree), and so few of even these as hardly to keep the eggs from falling through. These Babblers lay four oval eggs of a greenish-blue colour, but I once saw a nest with eight, and as there were several of these birds close to it, I have no doubt two or three shared it together, perhaps to avoid the necessity of each pair building for itself. Their nests are found in the months of March and April.

"It is in the nests of this species and our Common Laughing-Thrush (_T. cachinnans_) that I have chiefly found the eggs of the Pied Crested Cuckoo."