The eggs are rather long ovals, the shell fine but with very little gloss; the ground-colour is a dull white or pinky white, and it is thickly freckled and mottled about the large end and thinly elsewhere with red, in some cases slightly browner, in others purple.  The markings have a tendency to form a cap or zone about the large end, and here, where the markings are densest, some little lilac or purplish-grey spots and clouds are intermingled.

An egg measures 0.61 by 0.43.

441.  Abrornis schisticeps (Hodgs.). The Black-faced Flycatcher-Warbler.

Abrornis schisticeps, Hodgs., Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 201; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 571.

Captain Hutton tells us that the Black-faced Flycatcher-Warbler is “a common species in the neighbourhood of Mussoorie, at 5000 feet, and commences building in March.  A pair of these birds selected a thick China rose-bush trained against the side of the house, and had completed the nest and laid one egg when a rat destroyed it.  I subsequently took two other nests in May, both placed on the ground in holes in the side of a bank by the roadside.  In form the nest is a ball, with a round lateral entrance, and is composed externally of dried grasses and green moss, lined with bits of wool, cotton, feathers, thread, and hair.  The eggs are three in number.”

Two eggs of this species, sent to me by Captain Hutton, are very perfect ovals, pure white[A], and rather glossy.

[Footnote A:  There can be little doubt that Capt.  Hutton’s eggs were wrongly identified.—­ED.]

They both measure 0.62 by 0.48.

From Sikhim Mr. Gammie writes:—­“The only nest I ever found of this Warbler was in a natural hole in a small tree in an open part of a large forest, at 5500 feet above the sea.  In a cleft, five feet from ground, where a limb had been lopped off, there was a small hole, barely large enough, at entrance to admit the bird, but gradually widening out for the seven or eight inches of its depth.  In the bottom of this cavity was a loose lining of dry bamboo-leaves, on which lay five eggs.  They do not agree with those taken by Captain Hutton, which were ‘pure white,’ but I am absolutely certain of the authenticity of the eggs taken by me.  They were well-set, so five is probably the full complement.  They were taken on the 26th May.”

The eggs sent by Mr. Gammie, for the authenticity of which he vouches, are moderately broad ovals, somewhat compressed and pyriform towards the small end.  They have but little gloss, and are of the same type as A. superciliaris and A. albigularis.  The ground is a dull pinkish white, and they are profusely mottled and streaked with red, which in some eggs is brownish, in some purplish.  The markings are densest at the large end, where they have a tendency to form an irregular zone, which in some specimens is very conspicuous.

These eggs vary from 0.56 to 0.57 in length, and from 0.41 to 0.42 in breadth.