The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds Part 53

Birds like these, that build half-a-dozen different kinds of nests, ought to be abolished; they lead to all kinds of mistakes and differences of opinion, and are more trouble than they are worth.

Colonel E.A. Butler writes:--"Found numerous nests of this species at Belgaum on the following dates:--

"July 13. A nest containing 4 fresh eggs.

" 22. " " " 3 "

" 25. " " " 4 "

" 26. " " " 3 "

" 26. " " " 3 "

" 28. " " " 2 slightly incubated eggs.

Aug. 5. " " " 4 fresh eggs.

" 6. " " " 4 "

"All of the above nests were built in sugarcane-fields or in corn-fields; and most of them were st.i.tched up in leaves of various plants after the fas.h.i.+on of Tailor-birds' nests; but in some instances they were of the other type, simply supported by the blades of sugar-cane or corn they were built in. In addition to the above I found numerous other nests all through August, many of which were destroyed by something or other--what, I do not know! In fact, it has always been a puzzle to me what it is that takes the eggs of these small birds: three out of four nests, when visited a second time, are either empty, gone altogether, or pulled down; and how the birds ever manage to hatch off a brood at all with so many enemies I do not know.

"I found a nest of the Ashy Wren-Warbler at Deesa on the 21st July, containing three fresh eggs, of a highly polished deep mahogany-red colour, with an almost invisible cap of the same colour a shade darker at the large end. The nest, which was placed in the centre of a low bush and fixed to a few small twigs, was oval in shape, measuring 3 inches in length exteriorly and 2-5/8 in width, with a small round entrance near the top about 1 inch in diameter. It was composed of fine dry fibrous gra.s.s, with silky vegetable down (_Calotropis giganten_) and cobwebs smeared over the exterior. The walls were very thin, but the bottom of the nest somewhat solid. The whole well woven and compactly built. Later on I got nests on the following dates:--

"Aug. 1. A nest containing 3 fresh eggs.

" 1. " " 2 "

" 5. " " 4 "

" 5. " " 4 "

" 8. " " 3 "

" 9. " " 4 "

" 26. " " 3 "

"In addition to the above, I found nests containing young birds on the 15th, 17th, and 23rd August.

"The nests are of two distinct types. One as above described; the other, which is the commoner of the two, a regular Tailor-bird's nest st.i.tched between two leaves but without any lining. The eggs vary a good deal in shade, some being paler than others. Some eggs I have look almost like little b.a.l.l.s of red carnelian. Creepers (convolvulus &c.) growing up low th.o.r.n.y bushes in gra.s.s-beerhs are a favourite place for the nest."

Lieut. H.E. Barnes informs us that in Rajputana this Warbler breeds from July to September.

Messrs. Davidson and Wenden state that this bird is common in the Deccan and breeds in August.

Mr. Rhodes W. Morgan, writing from South India, says:--"It builds in March, constructing a very neat pendent nest, which is artfully concealed, and supported by sewing one or two leaves round it. This is very neatly done with the fine silk which surrounds the eggs of a small brown spider. The nest is generally built of fine gra.s.s, and contains three eggs of a bright brick-colour with a high polish. The entrance to the nest is at the top and a little on one side. An egg measured 07 inch in length by 048 in breadth."

As for the eggs, it is unnecessary to describe them; they are precisely similar to those of _P. stewarti_, fully described below.

All that can be said is that as a body they are slightly larger, and _possibly_, as a _whole_, the least shade less dark. In length they vary from 052 to 072, and in breadth from 045 to 052; but the average of twenty-one eggs measured is 064 by rather more than 047[A].

[Footnote A: As a matter of convenience I keep the notes on _P.

socialis_ and _P. stewarti_ separate, as is done in the 'Rough Draft'; but there is no doubt whatever now that the two birds are the same species.--ED.]

_Prinia stewarti_.

Stewart's Wren-Warbler is one of those forms in regard to which at present great difference of opinion prevails as to whether or no they merit specific separation. _P. stewarti_ from the N.W. Provinces and _P. socialis_ from the Nilghiris differ only in size; the latter is somewhat more robust, and probably weighs one fifth more than the former. But then in the Central Provinces you meet with intermediate sizes, and I have plenty of birds which might be a.s.signed indifferently to either race as a rather small example of the one or rather large one of the other. I myself consider all to belong to one species, but as this is not the general view I have kept my notes on their nidification separate.

This species or race breeds almost throughout the plains of Upper India and in the Sub-Himalayan ranges to an elevation of 3000 or 4000 feet. In the plains the breeding-season extends from the first downfall of rain in June (I have never found them earlier) to quite the end of August. In the moist Sub-Himalayan region, the Terais, Doons, Bhaburs, and the low hills, they commence laying nearly a month earlier.

This species often constructs as neatly sewn a nest as does the _Orthotomus_; in fact, many of the nests built by these two species so closely resemble each other that it would be difficult to distinguish them were there not very generally a difference in the lining. With few exceptions all the innumerable nests of _O. sutorius_ that I have seen were lined with some soft substance--cotton-wool, the silky down of the cotton-tree(_Bomlax heptaphyllum_) gra.s.s-down, soft horsehair, or even human hair, while the nests of _P. stewarti_ are almost without exception _lined_ with fine gra.s.s-roots.

Our present bird does not, however, invariably construct a "tailored"

nest. When it does, like _O. sittorius_, it sews two, three, four, or five leaves together, as may be most convenient, filling the intervening s.p.a.ce with down, fine gra.s.s, vegetable fibre, or wool, held firmly into its place by cross-threads, sometimes composed of cobwebs, sometimes made by the bird itself of cotton, and sometimes apparently derived from unravelled rags. It also, however, often makes a nest entirely composed of fine vegetable fibre, cotton, and gra.s.s-down, and lined as usual with fine gra.s.s-roots. Sometimes these nests are long and purse-like, and sometimes globular, either attached to, or pendent from, two or more twigs. One nest before me, a sort of deep watch-pocket, suspended from five twigs of the jhao (_Tamarix dioica_), measures externally 275 inches in diameter, is a good deal longer at what may be called the back than the front, and at the back fully 55 long. Internally the diameter is about 15, and the cavity, measuring from the lowest portion of the external rim, is 25. This is a _very_ large nest. Another, built between three leaves, has an external diameter of about 2 inches, and is externally not above 3 inches long. It is unnecessary here to describe the beautiful manner in which, when it makes use of leaves, this bird sews them together, as this has already been well described by others where _O. sutorius_ is concerned, and _P. stewarti_ is, in some cases, when forming a nest with leaves, fully as neat a workman.

The nests vary so much, and I have heard so much, discussion about them, that having seen at least a hundred and having taken full notes of some twenty of them, I shall reproduce a few of these notes:--

"_Agra, July 17th_.--Two nests--one nearly globular, composed entirely of fibrous roots, hair, wool, and thread, and lined with fine gra.s.s, suspended by a few fibres and hairs between the fork of a branchlet in a little dense bush of Indian box; the other, suspended from the tendril of an elephant creeper, was princ.i.p.ally formed by one of the leaves of this, to which, to form the remaining third of the exterior, a second leaf of the same plant was carefully sewn. Interiorly there was a little wool, and at the bottom fine gra.s.s.

"_July 20th_.--On a furash-tree (_Tamarix furas_), beautifully made of fine soft wool, shreds of tow and string, very fine gra.s.s and gra.s.s-roots, and the bottom neatly lined with very fine gra.s.s-roots.

In shape the nest is like one half of a long old-fas.h.i.+oned silk purse, round-bottomed and very compact, with a long slit-like opening on one side towards the top. It contained five eggs.

"_July 26th_.--Two nests, one formed almost entirely in a single mango-leaf, the sides of which are curled round so as nearly to meet, and then laced by a succession of cross-threads of cobweb, carefully knotted at each place where the margin of the leaf is pierced. The intervening s.p.a.ce is closed by fine tow, wool, and the silky down of the cotton-tree, with just the top of a small mango-leaf caught in from above so as to form an arched roof. The other nest was rounder in form, having less of a leafy structure. It had, however, the leaf of the _Phalsa_ forming the back and sides (partly), whilst the whole of the front was composed of soft wool, tow, dry gra.s.s-roots, thread, and a few pieces of the soft tree-cotton. It had a neighbouring leaf just caught in on one side. This contained four fresh eggs.

"_July 30th_.--A beautiful nest between three twigs, several of the leaves of each of which had been tacked on to the outside of the nest.

The nest itself was firmly put together with fine gra.s.s-roots, and was nearly globular in shape, with one side continued upwards into a sort of hood overhanging the greater portion of the aperture. It contained four eggs of the usual deep red colour.

"_August 8th_.--At b.i.+.c.hpoori found a number of nests, and some of them of a strangely different type. One was inside a tiny hut on the line, about 3 feet above the head of the chapra.s.sie's bed. It had no leaves about it, and was composed of thread, wool, and a few very fine gra.s.s-stems, and lined thinly with fine gra.s.s-stems and a little black horsehair. It was about two thirds of a sphere, the external diameter of which was about 3 inches, and the internal 2 inches. The bird was on the nest, so that there could be no mistake, otherwise it would have been impossible to believe that it belonged to _P. stewarti_, of which we have taken so many sewn in leaves. A little further on another nest of the same species, built in the ragged eaves of a thatch, externally composed almost entirely of cotton-wool, with a little tow-fibre binding the structure together, internally as usual lined with very fine gra.s.s-roots with a few horsehairs. Another nest of the _Prinia_ was in one respect even more remarkable. It was built in the usual situation in a low herbaceous plant, sewn to and suspended from two leaves, and two or three others worked into its sides. It was constructed almost entirely of fine gra.s.s-roots and fibres, with a few tiny tufts of cotton-wool, and the leaves as usual firmly tacked on with threads and cobweb fibres. It would seem that, after constructing the nest, but before laying, a large female spider took possession of the bottom of the nest, and shut herself in by constructing a diaphragm of web horizontally across the nest, thus occupying the whole of the cavity of the nest. The little bird accepted this change of circ.u.mstances, built the nest a little higher at the sides, and over the spider's web placed a false bottom of fine gra.s.s-roots, on which she laid her four eggs, and there she was sitting when the nest was taken, the spider, alive and apparently happy in the cell below, plainly visible through the interstices of the gra.s.s, with a huge sac of eggs which she was incubating. Her chamber is fully one half of the nest."

I may add that this latter nest, with the _now_ dead spider, _in situ_, is still in our museum.

In number the eggs are sometimes four, sometimes five, and I have _heard_ of six being found.

They rear usually two broods; if their eggs are taken they will lay three or four sets; sometimes they use the same nest twice; sometimes, directly the first brood is at all able to s.h.i.+ft for themselves, the parents leave them in the old nest, and commence building a new one at no great distance.

The late Mr. A. Anderson remarked:--"Owing to the inclemency of the weather (August) the geranium-pots in the garden were placed in the verandah of the house I am at present living in, and, strange to say, a pair of these Warblers commenced building in the leaves of one of the plants immediately under my window.

"When the nest was about half-finished the birds' forsook it without apparently any reason, as they were never molested in any way. On examining the nest, however, the cause was evident, and afforded a remarkable instance of instinct on the part of the little architects.

The leaves that had been pierced and sewn together had actually commenced to _wither_, and in the course of a few days later the whole structure came down bodily.

"This is the only _Prinia_ to be found at Futtehgurh, and they are one of our most common garden-birds. Their beautiful brick-red eggs and neatly-sewn nests are too well known to require description.

"Four generally, and five frequently, is the number of eggs they lay.

I have _one_ record of _six_ on the 17th August, 1873; in this case one egg was laid daily, the first having been laid on the 12th, and the sixth on the 17th."

Captain Hutton remarks:--"This is a true Tailor-bird in respect to the construction of the nest, which is composed of one leaf as a supporting base st.i.tched to two others meeting it perpendicularly, the apices of all three being neatly sewn together with threads roughly spun from the cottony down of seeds. Between or within these leaves is placed the nest, very slightly and loosely constructed of fine roots, gra.s.s-stalks, and seed-down, the latter material being interwoven to hold the coa.r.s.er fibres of the nest together. There is no finer lining within, and the edges of the exterior leaves are drawn together round the nest and held there partly by roughly-spun threads of down, and partly by the ends of the stiff fibres being thrust through them. The whole forms a very light and graceful fabric. Within this nest were four beautiful and highly polished eggs of a deep brick-red colour, darkest at the larger end, faint specks and blotches of a deeper colour being indistinctly discernible beneath the surface of the sh.e.l.l, which s.h.i.+nes as if it had been varnished. The nest is not closed above, but is open and deeply cup-shaped. This was taken in the Dhoon on the 30th May."

Major C.T. Bingham says:--"Breeds at Allahabad in June, July, and August. At Delhi I have not yet found its nest. I once found in July three nests all attached together in a sort of triangle, but whether built by separate pairs of birds I cannot say. Only one nest contained eggs."

Colonel G.F.L. Marshall writes:--"A nest found in July in the Cawnpoor district was built of gra.s.s, a deep oblong domed nest with the entrance at the side near the top. It was placed close to the ground in a tuft of surkerry gra.s.s sloping rather backwards. The position is, I believe, unusual. The old birds were still putting finis.h.i.+ng touches to the building when I found it."

The eggs are ovals, as a rule, neither very broad nor much elongated.

Pyriform examples occur, but a somewhat perfect oval is the usual type, and the examination of a large series shows that the tendency is to vary to a globular and not to an elongated shape. The eggs are brilliantly glossy, and, though considerably smaller, strongly resemble, as is well known, those of the little short-tailed Cetti's Warbler.

In colour they are brick-red, some, however, being paler and yellower, others deeper and more mahogany-coloured. There is a strong tendency to exhibit all ill-defined cloudy cap or zone, of far greater intensity than the colour of the rest of the egg, at or towards the large end.

In length the eggs vary from 06 to 068, and in breadth from 045 to 05; but the average of seventy eggs measured is 062 by 046.

465. Prinia sylvatica, Jerd. _The Jungle Wren-Warbler_.

Drymoipus sylvaticus, _Jerd. B. Ind_ ii, p. 181; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 545.

Drymoipus neglectus, _Jerd. R. Ind._ ii, p. 182; _Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 546.