Mr. Vidal notes in his list of the Birds of the South Konkan:—­“Common in mangrove-swamps, reeds, hedgerows, thickets, and bush-jungle throughout the district.  Breeds during the rainy months.”

Mr. Oates writes from Pegu:—­“Nest with three fresh eggs on the 19th August; no details appear necessary except the colour of the eggs, since this bird appears to lay two kinds of eggs.  My eggs are very glossy, of a light blue speckled with minute dots of reddish brown, more thickly so at the large end than elsewhere.”

The nests sent by Mr. Blewitt are regular Tailor-birds’ nests, composed chiefly of very fine grass, about the thickness of fine human hair, with no special lining, carefully sewn with cobwebs, silk from cocoons, or wool, into one or two leaves, which often completely envelop it, so as to leave no portion of the true nest visible.

The eggs belong to at least two very distinct types.  Both are typically rather slender ovals, a good deal compressed towards one end; but in both somewhat broader and more or less pyriform varieties occur.  In both the shell is exquisitely fine and glossy; in some specimens it is excessively glossy.  In both the ground-colour is a very delicate pale greenish blue, occasionally so pale that the ground is all but white—­in one type entirely unspeckled and unspotted, in the other finely and thickly speckled everywhere, and towards the large end more or less spotted, with brownish or purplish red.  The markings are densest towards the large end, where they either actually form, or exhibit a strong tendency to form, a more or less conspicuous speckled, semi-confluent zone.

Out of fifty-six eggs, twenty-one belong to the latter type.  As in Dicrurus ater, the two types never appear to be found in the same nest; but the nests in which the two types are found are precisely similar, and the parent birds are identical.

In length the eggs vary from 0.53 to 0.62, and in width from 0.4 to 0.45; but the average of fifty-six eggs is 0.58 by 0.42.  There is no difference whatever in the size of the two types.

383.  Franklinia rufescens (Blyth). Beavan’s Wren-Warbler.

Prinia beavani, Wald., Hume, cat. no. 538 bis.

Mr. Oates, who found the nest of this Warbler in Pegu, says:—­“June 29th.  Found a nest sewn into a broad soft leaf of a weed in forest about 2 feet from the ground.  The edges of the leaf are drawn together and fastened by white vegetable fibres.  The nest is composed entirely of fine grass, no other material entering into its composition.  For further security the nest is stitched to the leaves in a few places; the depth of the nest is about 3 inches, and internal diameter all the way down about 11/2.  Eggs three, very glossy, pale blue, with specks and dashes of pale reddish brown, chiefly at the larger end, where they form a cap.  Size .58, .62, .61, by .47.”

Mr. Mandelli sends me a regular Tailor-bird’s nest as that of this species.  It was found below Yendong in Native Sikhim on the 1st May, and contained three fresh eggs.  The nest itself is a beautiful little cup, composed of silky vegetable down and excessively fine grass-stems, and a very little black hair firmly felted together, and is placed between two living leaves of a sapling neatly sewn together at the margins with bright yellow silk.