Dr. Jerdon says:—­“A nest made chiefly of moss, with four small white eggs, was brought me as the nest of this bird.  It was of the ordinary shape, rather loosely put together, and the walls of great thickness.  It was taken from the ground on a steep bank near the stump of a tree.”

The three eggs in my museum supposed to belong to this species pertained to this nest, and are excessively tiny, somewhat oval eggs of a pure, dull, glossless unspotted white, very unlike our English Wren’s egg and certainly not one half the size.  Dr. Jerdon was not quite certain to which species of Tesia these eggs belonged, and I therefore only record this “quantum valeat”.  They measure 0.55 and 0.6 inch in length by 0.4, 0.42, and 0.45 inch in breadth.  I am inclined to believe that both nest and eggs belonged to Pnoepyga pusilla, Hodgs.

Subfamily SIBIINAE.

203.  Sibia picaoides, Hodgs. The Long-tailed Sibia.

Sibia picaoides, Hodgs.  Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 55; Hume, Rough Draft
N. & E. no. 430.

Mr. Gammie obtained a nest of the Long-tailed Sibia from the top of a tall tree, situated at an elevation of about 4000 feet, in the neighbourhood of Rungbee, near Darjeeling.  This was on the 17th June, and the nest contained five fresh eggs.  The nest is as perplexing as are the eggs; for the nest is that of a Bulbul, the eggs those of a Shrike or Minivet.  The nest is a deep compact cup, about 41/2 inches in diameter and 23/4 inches in depth.  The egg-cavity is 3 inches across and fully 13/4 inch in depth.  Interiorly the nest is composed of excessively fine grass-stems very firmly interwoven; externally of the stems of some herbaceous plant, a Chenopod, to which the dry blossoms are still attached, intermingled with coarse grass, a single dead leaf, and one or two broad grass-blades more or less broken up into fibres.

The eggs, for the authenticity of which Mr. Gammie positively vouches, are very unlike what might have been expected.  They are absolutely Shrike’s eggs—­broad ovals, pointed towards one end, with a slight gloss, the ground a slightly greyish white, with a good many small spots and specks of pale yellowish brown and dingy purple, chiefly confined to a large irregular zone towards the larger end.  They vary in length from 0.86 to 0.93, and in breadth from 0.7 to 0.73.

204.  Lioptila capistrata (Vigors). The Black-headed Sibia.

Sibia capistrata (Vig.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 54; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 429.

The Black-headed Sibia lays throughout the Himalayas from Afghanistan to Bhootan, at elevations of from 5000 to 7000 feet.

It lays during May and June, and perhaps part of July, for I find that on the 11th of July I found a nest of this species a little below the lake at Nynee Tal, on the Jewli Road, containing two young chicks apparently not a day old.