299.  Pycnonotus finlaysoni, Strickl. Finlayson’s Stripe-throated Bulbul.

Ixus finlaysoni (Strickl.), Hume, cat. no. 452 ter.

Major C.T.  Bingham says:—­“On the 22nd May, 1877, while wandering about collecting in the jungles below the Circuit-house at Maulmain, I came across a neat, though thinly made, cup-shaped nest in the fork of a tall sapling, some 12 feet above the ground.  Coming closer, I perceived it contained eggs, which were plainly visible through the frail structure of the sides.  On looking about to find the owner, I saw a couple of Pycnonotus finlaysoni flitting about uneasily in a tree close at hand; so I hid myself a few yards off, and was almost immediately rewarded by seeing one of them (it turned out to be the female) fly down on to the nest, and seat herself on the eggs.  Approaching cautiously, I managed to shoot her as she slipped off; but, on taking down the nest, I found I had fired too soon, as one of the eggs (there were but two) was smashed by a pellet of shot.  The nest was rather a deep cup, and, notwithstanding its flimsy sides, strongly made of grass-roots, lined with very fine black roots of fern.  The one unbroken egg was rather roundish in shape, of a dull whitish and claret colour, mixed and spotted and clouded with deeper vinous red, chiefly at the larger end.”

Mr. J. Darling, Junior, found the nest of this Bulbul on more than one occasion at Taroar in the Malay peninsula.  He writes:—­“I shot this bird off a nest with two eggs on the 8th February; the nest was in a bush 5 feet from the ground; the foundation was of leaves and fine grass, lined with fine grass and a few cocoanut fibres.  The nest was 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep.  The eggs were too hard-set to blow.

“On the 10th February I took another nest of Pycnonotus finlaysoni at Taroar.  The nest was built in a small shrub 3 feet from the ground, in a fork; foundation of dead leaves, built of fine twigs and fibrous bark; lined with fine grass-bents and moss-roots.  Egg-cavity 23/4 inches in diameter, 13/4 deep; walls 1/4 inch thick, bottom 3/4 inch.

“Found a nest of Pycnonotus finlaysoni, with two fresh eggs, on the 16th March.  The nest was built in a thin small sapling, 51/2 feet from ground, on the top of a thinly wooded hill; the nest was of the ordinary Bulbul type, but better put together and neater.  The foundation was of broad fibrous bark and twigs, lined with fine grass-stalks.”

The eggs vary in shape from broad ovals a good deal pointed towards one end, to pyriform and elongated shaped, very obtuse even at the small end.  The shell is fine and compact, in some has a fine gloss, in others it is rather dull.  The ground-colour is a beautiful pink, sometimes with a creamy tinge, and the markings are bold blotches, spots, and streaks of a maroon of varying degrees in richness, and of a subsurface-looking purple, varying to almost inky grey.  In some eggs the maroon, in some the purple or grey seems to predominate; in some eggs the markings seem pretty equally distributed over the egg; in others they form a more or less conspicuous zone about the larger end.  The eggs measure from 0.85 to 0.92 in length by 0.6 to 0.7 in breadth.