The eggs of this species vary from broad to moderately elongated ovals, but they are almost always somewhat pointed towards the small end; the shell is fine but as a rule glossless; here and there, however, an egg exhibits a faint gloss.  The ground-colour is whitish, never pure white, with an excessively faint greenish, greyish, creamy, or pinky tinge.  The markings are very variable in amount and extent, but they are always black or nearly so and pale inky grey; perhaps typically the markings consist of a zone of black hair-lines twisted and entangled together, in which irregular shaped spots and small blotches of the same colour appear to have been caught, which zone is underlaid and more or less surrounded by clouds, streaks, and spots of pale inky grey.  This zone is typically about the large end, but in one or two eggs is near the middle of the egg and in one or two is about the small end.  Outside this zone a few small specks and spots, and rarely one or two tiny blotches, of both black and grey are thinly scattered; occasionally, however, the hair-lines so characteristic of this egg are almost entirely wanting, there is no apparent zone, and the markings, spots, and specks are thinly and irregularly distributed about the entire surface; here and there the whole of the dark markings on the egg are entirely confined to the zone, elsewhere only pale lilac specks are visible.  Occasionally together with a well-defined zone numerous specks, spots, and a few hair-line scratches of black are intermingled with faint purplish-grey spots, and pretty thinly scattered everywhere.

The eggs vary from 0.53 to 0.68 in length and from 0.46 to 0.51 in breadth; but the average of a very large number is 0.61 by 0.49.

402.  Sylvia affinis (Blyth). The Indian Lesser White-throated Warbler.

Sylvia curruca (Gm.), apud Jerd.  B.I. ii, p. 209. 
Sterparola curruca (Lath.), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 583.

Of the nidification of the Lesser Whitethroat within our limits, I only know that it was found in May, breeding abundantly in Cashmere in the lower hills, by Mr. Brooks.  He did not notice it comparatively high up; for instance at Goolmerg, which, though not above 9000 feet high, is at the base of a snowy range, he did not see it at all.

It builds a loose, rather shallow, cup-shaped nest, composed chiefly of grass, coarser on the exterior and finer interiorly, which it places in low bushes and thickets at no great elevation from the ground.  The nest is more or less lined with fine grass and roots.

It lays four or sometimes five eggs.

Mr. Brooks writes:—­“I found this Whitethroat tolerably numerous in Cashmere, where it appears generally distributed, occurring at from 5500 to 6500 feet elevation or thereabouts, It frequents places where there is abundance of brushwood or underwood, especially along the banks of rivers or near them.