The late Captain Beavan remarked that this bird “appears to come to the Maunbhoom District for the purpose of breeding.  I procured the nest and eggs early in April, and the young were nearly fledged by the 20th of that month; they appear to come year after year to particular localities to breed.

“Several nests were brought me from the neighbourhood of Kashurghur both in 1864 and 1865, whereas none were seen elsewhere.  The nest is very small for the size of the bird, and the material of which it is composed closely resembles the bird’s plumage in colour.  The nest is round and very shallow, something like a Chaffinch’s, being very neatly made; diameter inside 2 inches, depth 1 inch; composed of grey fibres, bits of bark, grass, and the like, cemented with spider’s web.  The eggs are two in number, greenish white, spotted with brown and slate-coloured dots, which in most specimens form a well-defined zone round the thickest part of the egg, leaving both ends without marks.  Length of the egg .75 inch; breadth .59 inch.  This bird was not observed in Maunbhoom except during the breeding-season.”

Mr. G.W.  Vidal, writing from the South Konkan, remarks:—­“Common, as also at Savant Vadi.  Nest found with three hard-set eggs on the 18th February, low down in a mango-tree.  Nest a very neat compact cap of grasses and fibres, woven throughout with spiders’ webs.  Eggs greyish white, with brown and inky-purple spots.”

Dr. Jerdon remarks:—­“The nest has been brought to me in August at Nellore, chiefly made of roots and lined with hair; and the eggs, three in number, were greenish white with large brown blotches.”

Major M.F.  Coussmaker sends me the following note from Mysore:—­“I took the nest of this bird on April 16th.  It was composed of fine roots and fibres closely woven into a compact nest, secured to a horizontal bough with cobweb and covered externally with lichen to match the tree.  It measured in diameter 4.1 inches externally and 2.2 internally and .8 deep.  The parent bird was shot from the nest.

“The nest contained two eggs, white with brown spots and markings.  They were so broken when I got them that no reliable measurements could be taken.”

Lastly, Mr. Gates writes from Pegu:—­“Nest with three fresh eggs on the 3rd March near Pegu.”

The eggs are very Shrike-like in appearance, and many of them are perfect miniatures of the eggs of Lanius lahtora, but some of them have a more uniformly brown tint than any of this latter species that I have yet met with.  The ground-colour is generally either a very pale greenish white or a creamy-stone colour, and more or less thickly spotted and blotched with different shades of yellowish and reddish brown; many of the markings are almost invariably gathered into a conspicuous, but irregular and ill-defined, zone near the large end, in which zone clouds of subsurface-looking, pale, and dingy purple, not usually observable on any other portion of the egg, are thickly intermingled.  The texture of the shell is fine and close, but scarcely any gloss is ever perceptible.  Occasionally the eggs are very faintly coloured, and have a dull white ground, while the markings consist of only a few spots and specks of very pale purple and pale rust-colour confined to a zone near the large end.