The eggs are rather elongated, very regular ovals.  The shell stout for the size of the egg, but very fine and compact, and with a moderate gloss.  The ground-colour is a very delicate pale greenish blue.  At or round the larger end there is very generally a mottled cap or zone (more commonly the latter) of duller or brighter brownish red, while irregular blotches, streaks, spots, and specks of the same colour, but usually a slightly paler shade, are more or less sparsely scattered over the rest of the surface of the egg, sometimes they are almost wholly wanting.  Occasionally the zone is at the small end.

The eggs measure from 0.60 to 0.62 in length, by 0.43 to 0.48 in breadth; but the average of six eggs is 0.61 by 0.45.

384.  Franklinia buchanani (Blyth). The Rufous-fronted Wren-Warbler.

Franklinia buchanani (Blyth), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 186; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 551.

The Rufous-fronted Wren-Warbler breeds throughout Central India, the Central Provinces, the North-western Provinces, the Punjab, and Rajpootana.  It affects chiefly the drier and warmer tracts, and, though said to have been obtained in the Nepal Terai, has never been met with by me either there or in any very moist, swampy locality.  The breeding-season extends from the end of May until the beginning of September.

The nests, according to my experience, are always placed at heights of from a foot to 4 feet from the ground, in low scrub-jungle or bushes.  They vary greatly in size and shape, according to position.  Some are oblate spheroids with the aperture near the top, some are purse-like and suspended, and some are regular cups.  One of the former description measured externally 5 inches in diameter one way by 31/4 inches the other.  One of the suspended nests was 7 inches long by 3 wide, and one of the cup-shaped nests was nearly 4 inches in diameter and stood, perhaps, at most 21/2 inches high.  The egg-cavity in the different nests varies from 13/4 to 21/4 inches in diameter, and from less than 2 to fully 3 inches in depth.  Externally the nest is very loosely and, generally, raggedly constructed of very fine grass-stems and tow-like vegetable fibre used in different proportions in different nests; those in which grass is chiefly used being most ragged and straggling, and those in which most vegetable fibre has been made use of being neatest and most compact.  In all the nests that I have seen the egg-cavity has been lined with something very soft.  In many of the nests the lining is composed of small felt-like pieces of some dull salmon-coloured fungus, with which the whole interior is closely plastered; in others there is a dense lining of soft silky vegetable down; and in others the down and fungus are mingled.  They lay from four to five eggs, never more than this latter number according to my experience.

“At the end of June 1867,” writes Mr. Brooks, “I took two nests of this bird at Chunar in low ber bushes about 2 feet from the ground.  They were little spheres of fine grass with a hole at the side.  One contained four eggs; these were of a greyish-white ground or nearly pure white, finely speckled over with reddish brown, some of the eggs exhibiting a tendency to form a zone round the large end, and others with a complete zone.”