Captain Hutton says:—­“This is a common species both in the Dhoon and in the hills, and may be found at all seasons, making known its presence among the brushwood by the utterance of a clear and musical note like the ringing of a tiny bell.  In the winter time it is often mixed up with flocks composed of Siva strigula and Liothriae luteus, creeping among the bushes like the Pari and Phylloscopi.  It constructs its nest at the base of bushes, the eggs being three in number, of a faint greenish grey, thickly irrorated with small reddish-brown specks.  The nest is composed of dry grass-blades externally, within which is a layer of fine woody stalks and fibres, and lined with black hair.  It is cup-shaped, and placed upon a thick bed of dried leaves, which are most probably accumulated beneath the bush by the wind.  One nest was taken at Dehra, in a garden, on the 30th July, and others at Mussoorie about the same time.”

But the eggs sent by Captain Hutton clearly do not, I think, pertain to this species.  Those taken by Colonel Marshall are certainly genuine, and are considerably larger and very differently coloured eggs.

In shape they are moderately broad ovals, some of them slightly compressed towards the small end.  The shell is very fine and smooth, but with scarcely any gloss; the ground is pure white, and they are thinly speckled and spotted, the markings being much more numerous about the large end, where they have a tendency to form an ill-defined cap or zone with brownish red or pinky brown.

In length they vary from 0.62 to 0.69, and in breadth from 0.5 to 0.52.

175.  Cyanoderma erythropterum (Blyth). The Red-winged Babbler.

Cyanoderma erythropterum, Bl., Hume, cat. no. 396 bis.

Mr. W. Davison found the nest of the Red-winged Babbler at Bankasoon on the 23rd April, just when he was leaving the place.  Unfortunately the birds had not yet laid.  The nest was a ball composed of dry reed-leaves, about 6 inches in diameter.  Externally, with a circular aperture on one side, very like that of Mixornis rubricapillus and of Dumetia, and again not at all unlike that of Ochromela nigrorufa, but placed in a bush about 4 feet high and not on the ground.

176.  Mixornis rubricapillus (Tick.). The Yellow-breasted Babbler.

Mixornis rubricapilla (Tick.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 23; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 395.

This, though said to occur also in Central India, is a purely Indo-Burmese form, found chiefly in the Eastern sub-Himalayan jungles, Assam, Cachar, Burma, and Tenasserim.

It is only from this latter province that I have any information as to the nidification of the Yellow-breasted Babbler.