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 Tenasserim 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 0.79 by 0.6.

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 31/2 inches in diameter and 2 inches in height, very firmly woven of moss and grass-roots, but with a certain quantity of dry and dead leaves, and here and there a little cobweb worked into the outer surface.  Sometimes a little fine grass was used as a lining; but generally there was no lining, only the roots that were used in finishing 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 grass.  One nest measured internally 21/2 inches in diameter by nearly 11/2 inch in depth; externally it was nearly 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches in height.  The eggs were of the usual type.”