418.  Phylloscopus humii (Brooks). Hume’s Willow-Warbler.

Reguloides humii, Brooks, Hume, cat. no. 565 bis.  Reguloides superciliosus (Gm), Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 565.

Mr. Brooks and Captain Cock are the only persons I know of who have taken the eggs and nests of this species.  The nest and eggs sent to and described by me in ‘The Ibis’ as belonging to this bird cannot really have pertained to it.

Mr. Brooks tells us that P. humii “is very abundant in Cashmere, and I believe in all hills immediately below the snows.  It would be vain to look for this bird at elevations below 8000 feet, or at any distance from the snows.  It was common even in the birch woods above the upper line of pines.  I found many nests.  It builds a globular nest of coarse grass on a bank side, always on the ground, and never up a tree.  The nest is lined with hair in greater or lesser quantities.  The eggs, four or five in number, average .56 by .44, are pure white, profusely spotted with red, and sometimes have also a few spots of purplish grey.  On the 15th June I found a nest with four young ones on the south side of the Pir-Pinjal Pass.  This bird has no song, only a double chirp in addition to its callnote.  The double chirp, which is very loud, is intended for a song, for the male bird incessantly repeats it as he feeds from tree to tree near where the female is sitting upon her nest.”

Nests of this species obtained in Cashmere towards the end of May and during June near Goolmerg, and brought me by Mr. Brooks, were certainly by no means worthy of this pretty little Warbler.  They are very loosely made, more or less straggling cups of somewhat coarse grass, only slightly lined interiorly with fine moss-roots.  The egg-cavity is very small compared with the size of the nest, some of which, look like balls of grass with a small hole in the centre.  They average from 4 to 5 inches in external diameter, and from 2 to 3 inches in height.  The egg cavity does not exceed 2 inches in diameter, and seems often to be less, and is from an inch to half an inch in depth.

From Cashmere, when in the thick of the nests of this species, Mr. Brooks wrote to me as follows:—­

“From Goolmerg, which is at the foot of a snowy range, I went up to the foot of the snows through pine-forests.  The pines ceased near the snow and were replaced by birch wood on tremendously rocky ground, which bothered me greatly to get over.  I had missed P. humii after leaving the foot of the hill, where water was plentiful, but here again the bird became abundant.  I could not, however, find a nest here, though I watched several pairs.  I think in the cooler country they breed later.  Flowers which had gone out of bloom below I again met with up here in full flower.