There are two very strongly marked types of this bird’s eggs.  The eggs of both types are moderately broad, or, at most, somewhat elongated ovals, and comparatively devoid of gloss.  The first, in its colouring, exactly resembles the eggs of Caprimulgus indicus; a pinkish salmon-coloured ground, streaked, blotched, and clouded, but nowhere densely (except towards the large end, where there is a tendency to form a cap or zone), with reddish pink, not differing widely in hue from, though deeper in shade than, the ground-colour.  Here and there, where the markings are thickest, under-clouds of very faint purple occur, but these are too feeble to attract attention, unless the egg is looked into closely.  In the other type of egg, the ground-colour is pale pinkish white, pretty boldly blotched and spotted almost exclusively towards the large end, where there is a broad irregular imperfect zone, with brownish red, intermingled with blotches of very faint inky purple.  My description possibly fails to make this as apparent as it should be, but no two eggs can, to a casual observer, appear more distinct than these two types.  There is yet, according to Mr. Brooks, a third type of this bird’s eggs; of this he has given me a single example.  In shape it is excessively long and narrow, of the type of the eggs of Chibia hottentotta, but its coloration and character of markings are unlike those of any Shrike or Drongo with which I am acquainted, and exactly resemble those of many types of the eggs of the several Bulbuls.  The ground-colour is pinkish white, and is thickly speckled and spotted throughout with primary markings of rich brownish red, and feeble secondary ones of excessively pale inky purple.  This egg, moreover, possesses a degree of gloss never observable in those of the Dicruri, and therefore, well assured though Mr. Brooks is of the parentage of this egg which he took with his own hands, I feel confident, having since obtained many eggs of Hypsipetes psaroides which are exactly similar to this last described egg, that in, perhaps, indifferent light he mistook this bird for a Dicrurus.  I may add that the first described type, of which I have procured numerous specimens from different parts of the Himalayas, taking several nests with my own hands, is most characteristic of this species.

In the type with the pinky-white ground, large or small spots often occur about the large end of a deep purple colour, so deep as to be almost black, and but for the absence of gloss some of these paler eggs are very close to those of some of the Orioles.  Intermediate varieties between the two types above described occur, but in not one of more than sixty specimens that I have examined has there been any perceptible gloss.

The eggs vary in length from 0.85 to 1.01 inch, and in breadth from 0.7 to 0.75 inch, but the average of fifty-one eggs is 0.95 by 0.74 inch.

329.  Dicrurus nigrescens, Oates. The Tenasserim Ashy Drongo.