The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds Part 31

"The eggs, however, in both nests, three in each, closely resembled each other, being of a delicate pink ground, with reddish-brown and purplish-grey spots and blotches nearly equally distributed over the whole surface of the egg, the reddish brown in places becoming almost a maroon-red. Two eggs, however, that we took out of a nest, similar to the first in structure but situated like the second in a mango-tree, were of a somewhat different character and very different in tint. The ground was dingy reddish pink, and the whole of the egg was thickly mottled all over with very deep blood-red, the mottlings being so thick at the large end as to form an almost perfectly confluent cap. Altogether the colouring of these two eggs reminded one of richly coloured types of _Neophron's_ eggs. Some of the Bulbuls'

eggs that we have taken earlier in the season were much feebler coloured than any of those obtained to-day, and presented a very different appearance, with a pinkish-white ground, and only moderately thickly but very uniformly speckled all over with small spots of light purplish grey, light reddish brown, and very dark brown. These eggs scarcely seem to belong to the same bird as the boldly blotched and richly-mottled specimens that we have taken to-day."

Writing from the neighbourhood of Delhi, Mr. F.R. Blewitt says: "This Bulbul breeds from the middle of May to about the middle of August.

Its selection of a tree for its nest is arbitrary, as I have found the latter on almost every variety of bush and tree. The nest is neatly cup-shaped, generally fragile in structure, though I have seen many a nest strong and compact. The outer diameter of the nest varies from 3 to nearly 4 inches, and the inner diameter from 2 to almost 3 inches.

"The chief material of the nest is, on the outside, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, with fine _khus_ or fine gra.s.s for the lining. Very frequently horsehair is likewise used for lining the interior of the cavity.

"I have seen some nests bound round on the outside with hemp, other kinds of vegetable fibres, and even spider's web.

"The regular number of the eggs is four."

Mr. W. Theobald found the present species breeding in Monghyr in the fourth week of June.

Mr. Nunn remarks:--"I took a nest of this species at Hoshungabad on 26th June, 1868, which contained four eggs; it was placed in a lime-tree, was composed of very small twigs, and lined inside with fine gra.s.s-roots; it was cup-shaped, and measured internally 225 inches in breadth by 175 in depth."

The late Mr. A. Anderson wrote from Futtehgurh:--"On the 30th April last (1874) I took a very beautifully and curiously constructed nest of our Common Bulbul. In shape and size it resembled the ordinary nest, but the curious part of it was that the upper portion of the nest for an inch all round was composed entirely of _green twigs_ of the neem tree on which it was built, and the under surface (below) was felted with fresh blossoms belonging to the same tree. The green twigs had evidently been broken off by the birds, but the flowers were picked up from off the ground, where they were lying thick."

Colonel Butler says:--"The Madras Red-vented Bulbul breeds in the neighbourhood of Deesa all through the hot weather and in the monsoon.

I found a nest at Mount Aboo in a garden on the 15th of April in the middle of a pot of sweet peas, containing three fresh eggs. I found other nests in Deesa, from the 11th May to 20th August, each containing three eggs.

"The nest is usually built of dry gra.s.s-stems, lined with fine roots and a few horsehairs neatly woven together. One nest I found was in a very remarkable situation, viz. inside an uninhabited bungalow upon the top of a door leading out of a sitting-room; the door was open and the bolt at the top had been forced back, and it was between the top of the door and the top of the bolt that the nest rested. The old bird entered the building by pa.s.sing first of all through the lattice-work of the verandah, and then through a broken window-pane into the room where the nest was built."

Mr. R.M. Adam informs us that this bird breeds at Sambhur during June and July.

Lieut. H.E. Barnes, speaking of Rajputana in general, states that this Bulbul breeds from April to September. Nests are occasionally found even earlier than this, but they are exceptions to the general rule.

Major C.T. Bingham writes:--"The first nest I have a note of taking was at Allahabad on the 2nd April. At Delhi it breeds from the end of April to the end of July; I have, however, found most nests in May.

All have been firmly made little cups of slender twigs, sometimes dry stems of some herbaceous plant, and lined with fine gra.s.s-roots. Five is the usual number of eggs laid."

Mr. G.W. Vidal, writing of the South Konkan, says:--"Abundant everywhere. Breeds in April, and again in September."

Dr. Jerdon, whose experience of this species had been gained mainly in Madras, states that "it breeds from June to September, according to the locality. The nest is rather neat, cup-shaped, made of roots and gra.s.s, lined with hair, fibres, and spiders' webs[A], placed at no great height in a shrub or hedge. The eggs are pale pinkish, with spots of darker lake-red, most crowded at the thick end. Burgess describes them as a rich madder colour, spotted and blotched with grey and madder-brown: Layard as pale cream, with darker markings."

[Footnote A: This is some _lapsus pennae_. Spiders' webs are sometimes used exteriorly never as a lining.]

Mr. Benjamin Aitken writes:--"The Common Bulbul lays at Khandalla in May, but I never found a nest in the plains till after the rains had set in. I have found one nest in Bombay, one in Poona, and two in Berar, as late as October; and my brother found a nest in Berar in September, with three eggs which were duly hatched."

Writing from the Nilghiris, Miss c.o.c.kburn says that "the nests, which in shape closely resemble those of the Southern Red-whiskered Bulbul, are composed chiefly of gra.s.s. The eggs are three in number, and may occasionally be found in any month of the year, though most plentiful during February, March, and April."

In shape the eggs are typically rather long ovals, slightly compressed or pointed towards the small end. Some are a good deal pointed and elongated; a few are tolerably perfect broad ovals, and abnormal shapes are not very uncommon. The ground is universally pinkish or reddish white (in old eggs which have been kept a long time a sort of dull French white), of which more or less is seen according to the extent of the markings. These markings take almost every conceivable form, defined and undefined--specks, spots, blotches, streaks, smudges, and clouds; their combinations are as varied as their colours, which embrace every shade of red, brownish, and purplish red.

As a rule, besides the primary markings, feeble secondary markings of pale inky purple are exhibited, often only perceptible when the egg is closely examined, sometimes so numerous as to give the ground-colour of the egg a universal purple tint. In about half the eggs there is a tendency to exhibit, more or less, an irregular zone or cap at the large end, but solitary eggs occur in which there is a cap at the small end. Three pretty well marked types may be separately described.

First, an egg thickly mottled and streaked all over with deep blood-red, which is entirely confluent over one third of the surface, namely at the large end, and leaves less than a third of the ground-colour visible as a paler mottling over the rest of the surface. Then there is another type with a very delicate pure pink ground, and with a few large, bold, deep red blotches, chiefly at the large end, where they are intermingled with a few small pale inky-purple clouds, and with only a few spots and specks of the former colour scattered over the rest of the surface. Lastly, there is a pale dingy pink ground, speckled almost uniformly, but only moderately thickly, over the whole surface, with minute specks and spots of blood-red and pale inky purple.

The dimensions are excessively variable. In length the eggs vary from 07 to 102, and in breadth from 06 to 075, but the average of sixty eggs measured was 089 by 065.

279. Molpastes burmanicus (Sharpe). _The Burmese Red-vented Bulbul._

The Burmese Red-vented Bulbul occurs from Manipur down to Rangoon.

Writing from Upper Pegu, Mr. Oates says:--"On the 29th July I found a nest in the extremity of a bamboo-frond forming one of a large clump near my house at Boulay. It was circular, the internal diameter about 25 and the external 4 inches; the depth inside 15, and the total height 25. Foundation of dead leaves, the bulk of the nest coa.r.s.e gra.s.s and small roots, and the interior of much finer gra.s.s carefully curved to shape. Altogether the nest was a very pretty structure. Two eggs measured 09 by 062 and 065. Another nest found at the same time was placed in a small shrub about 4 feet from the ground. It was very similar in construction and size to the above and contained three eggs."

Subsequently writing from Lower Pegu, he says:--"Breeds abundantly from May to September, and has no particular preference for any one month."

281. Molpastes atricapillus (Vieill.). _The Chinese Red-vented Bulbul_.

Molpastes atricapillus (_V.), Hume, cat._ no. 462 ter.

Mr. J. Darling, Jr., found a nest of the Chinese Red-vented Bulbul in Tena.s.serim with three fresh eggs on the 16th March. It was built in a bush little more than a foot above the ground on a hill-side.

Except that they seem to run smaller, these eggs are not distinguishable from those of the other species of this genus, and there is really nothing to add to the description already given of the eggs of _M. Haemorrhous_. The three eggs measured 079 by 06.

282. Molpastes bengalensis (Blyth). _The Bengal Red-vented Bulbul_.

Pycnonotus pygaeus (_Hodgs.), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 93.

Molpastes pygmaeus (_Hodgs.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 461.

I have taken many nests of the Bengal Red-vented Bulbul in many localities, and while the birds vary, getting less typical as you go westwards, the nests are all pretty much the same, though the eastern birds go in rather more for dead leaves than the western. Sikhim birds are very typical, and I will therefore confine myself to quoting a note I made there.

Several nests taken at Darjeeling in June, at elevations of from 2000 to 4000 feet, each contained three or four, more or less incubated, eggs. The nests were mostly very compact and rather deep cups about 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches in height, very firmly woven of moss and gra.s.s-roots, but with a certain quant.i.ty of dry and dead leaves, and here and there a little cobweb worked into the outer surface.

Sometimes a little fine gra.s.s was used as a lining; but generally there was no lining, only the roots that were used in finis.h.i.+ng off the interior of the nests were rather finer than those employed elsewhere. The egg-cavity is very large for the size of the nest, the sides, though very firm and compact, being scarcely above half an inch in thickness. The nests differ very much in appearance, owing to the fact that in some all the roots used are black, in others pale brown.

Mr. Gammie says:--"I took two or three nests of this species in the latter half of May at Mongpho, in Sikhim, at elevations of 3500 feet or thereabouts. They contained three eggs each, hard-set. The nests were in trees, at a moderate height, and rather flimsy structures; shallow caps, composed externally of fine twigs and vegetable fibre, and generally some dead leaves intermingled, especially towards their basal portions, and lined with the fine hair-like stem portion of the flowering tops of gra.s.s. One nest measured internally 2 inches in diameter by nearly 1 inch in depth; externally it was nearly 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches in height. The eggs were of the usual type."

Mr. J.R. Cripps, writing from Fureedpore, Eastern Bengal, says:--"Excessively common and a permanent resident; commits great havoc in gardens amongst tomatoes and chillies, the red colour of which seems to attract them. Builds its nest in very exposed places and at all heights from two to thirty feet off the ground, in bushes and trees. One nest I saw containing two young ones, on the 28th June, was built on a small date-tree which stood on the side of a road along which people were pa.s.sing all day, and within six feet of them. The nest was only five feet from the ground, but the materials of which it was made and the colour of the bird a.s.similated so perfectly with the bark of the tree that detection was difficult. I have found the nests with eggs from the 3rd of April to the end of June; dead leaves and cobwebs were incorporated with the twigs and gra.s.ses in all nests which I have seen in Dacca. The natives keep these birds for fighting purposes; large sums are lost at times on these combats."

Writing from Nepal, Dr. Scully remarks:--"It breeds in May and June in the Residency grounds, the nests being very commonly placed in small pine-trees (_Pinus longifolia_). Three is the usual number of eggs found, and a clutch taken on the 29th May measured in length from 085 to 093, and in breadth from 064 to 065."

I have fully described the leading types of the eggs of these Bulbuls under _Molpastes haemorrhous_. I shall therefore only here say that the eggs of this species in shape and colour exactly resemble those of its congener, but that as a body they are larger in size; every variety observable in the eggs of the one is, as far as I know, to be met with amongst those of the other. Taking only the eggs of typical birds from Lower Bengal and Sikhim, they vary from 088 to 105 in length and from 067 to 075 in breadth.

283. Molpastes intermedius (A. Hay). _The Punjab Red-vented Bulbul_.

All my specimens from the Salt Range belong to this species, and not to _M. bengalensis_, so that Mr. W. Theobald's remarks in regard to the Common Bulbul's nidification about Pind Dadan Khan and the Salt Range must refer to this species. He says: "Lay in May, June, and July; eggs, four: shape, blunt ovato-pyriform; size, 087 by 062; colour, deep pink, blotched with deep claret-red; nest, a neat cup of vegetable fibres in bushes."

From Murree, Colonel C.H.T. Marshall writes:--"This Bulbul breds in large numbers on the lower hills."

From Mussoorie, Captain Hutton remarked:--"This is more properly a Dhoon species, as although it does ascend the hills, it is represented there to a great extent by _M. leucogenys_. It breeds in April, May, and June, constructing its nest in some thick bush. On the 12th May one nest contained three eggs of a rosy-white, thickly irrorated and blotched with purple or deep claret colour, and at the larger end confluently stained with dull purple, appearing as if beneath the sh.e.l.l. The nest is small and cup-shaped, composed of fine roots, dry gra.s.ses, flower-stalks chiefly of forget-me-not, and a few dead leaves occasionally interwoven; in some the outside is also smeared over here and there with cobwebs and silky seed-down; the lining is usually of very fine roots. Some nests have four eggs, which are liable to great variation both in the intensity of colouring and in the size and number of spots."

284. Molpastes leucogenys (Gr.). _The White-cheeked Bulbul_.

Otocompsa leucogenys (_Gray), Jerd. B. Ind._ ii, p. 90; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 458.

The White-cheeked Bulbul breeds throughout the Himalayas, from Afghanistan to Bhootan, from April to July, and at all heights from 3000 to 7000 feet. The nest is a loose, slender fabric, externally composed of fine stems of some herbaceous plant and a few blades of gra.s.s, and internally lined with very fine hair-like gra.s.s. The nests may measure externally, at most, 4 inches in diameter; but the egg-cavity, which is in proportion very large and deep, is fully 2 inches across by 1 inch deep. As I before said, the nest is usually very slightly and loosely put together, so that it is difficult to remove it without injury; but sometimes they are more substantial, and occasionally the cup is much shallower and wider than I have above described. Four is the full complement of eggs.

Captain Unwin says:--"I found a nest containing three fresh eggs near the village of Jaskote, in the Agrore Valley, on the 24th April, 1870.