“The eggs are, exactly as Jerdon describes them, of a pale blue, ‘almost like skimmed milk,’ and the usual number is three, though four are frequently laid.”

“On the 7th September,” writes Mr. E.M.  Adam, “in my garden in Lucknow, I discovered a nest of this bird in course of construction, but when it was nearly finished the birds left it.  The nest was a beautiful little cup made of fine grass and cobwebs.  It was situated in a slender fork of a mango-tree about 15 feet from the ground.”

Major C.T.  Bingham says:—­“Common both at Allahabad and at Delhi; breeds in both places in May, June, and July.  All nests I have seen have been finely made little cups of fibres, bits of thread and cobwebs, lined interiorly with horsehair, generally suspended between two slender twigs at no great height from the ground.”

Mr. E. Aitken writes:—­“I have only actually taken one nest of the White-eye.  That was in Poona (2000 feet above the sea) on the 21st July.  The bird, however, builds abundantly in Poona about gardens, trees on the roadside, &c.

“This particular nest was fixed to a thin branch of a tamarind-tree on the side of a lane among gardens.  It was within reach of my hand, and was attached both to the thin branch itself and to two twigs.  It was well sheltered among leaves.

“The nest was a cup rather narrower at the mouth than in the middle.  Its external diameter at the top was 21/2 inches; internal diameter 11/2 inch; depth 11/2 inch internally.  It was composed of a variety of fibres closely interwoven with some kind of vegetable silk, and was lined principally with horsehair and very fine fibres.  It contained three eggs.”

Mr. Davison tells us that “the White-eye breeds on the Nilghiris in February, March, April, and the earlier part of May.

“The nest is a small neat cup-shaped structure suspended between a fork in some small low bush, generally only 2 or 3 feet from the ground, but sometimes high up, about 20 or 30 feet from the ground.  It is composed externally of moss and small roots and the down from the thistle; the egg-cavity is invariably sparingly lined with hair.  The eggs, two in number, are of a pale blue, like skimmed milk.”

From Kotagherry Miss Cockburn remarks:—­“Their nests are, I think, more elegantly finished than those of any of the small birds I have seen up here.  They generally select a thick bush, where, when they have chosen a horizontal forked branch, they construct a neat round nest which is left quite open at the top.  The materials they commence with are green moss, lichen, and fine grass intertwined.  I have even found occasionally a coarse thread, which they had picked up near some Badagar’s village and used in order to fasten the little building to the branches.  The inside is carefully lined with the down of seed-pods.  White-eyes’ nests are very numerous here in the months of January, February, and March.  They are extremely partial to the wild gooseberry bush as a site to build on.  One year I found ten out of eleven nests on these bushes, the fruit of which is largely used by the aborigines of the hills.  A pair once built on a thick orange-tree in our garden.  We often stood quite close to one of them while sitting on the eggs, and it never showed the slightest degree of fear.  They lay two eggs of a light blue colour.”