The eggs vary in shape from rather broad to rather elongated ovals.  The shell is very fine and smooth, but has scarcely any perceptible gloss.  The ground-colour is greenish or greyish white, and they are profusely marked with comparatively fine longitudinal streaks of a moderately dark brown, which in some lines is more of a chocolate, in others perhaps more umber.  At both ends of the egg, but especially the smaller end, the markings often become spotty or speckly, but the fine longitudinal streaking of the sides of the egg is very conspicuous.

In size the eggs vary from 0.69 to 0.71 in length, by 0.51 to 0.58 in breadth.  I have measured too few eggs to be able to give a reliable average.

505.  Campophaga melanoschista (Hodgs.). The Dark-grey Cuckoo-Shrike.

Volvocivora melaschistos, Hodgs., Jerd.  B. Ind. i, p. 415:  Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 269.

I have never found the nest of the Dark-grey Cuckoo-Shrike.  Captain Hutton tells us:—­

“This, too, is a mere summer visitor in the hills, arriving up to 7000 feet about the end of March, and breeding early in May.  The nest is small and shallow, placed in the bifurcation of a horizontal bough of some tall oak tree, and always high up; it is composed externally almost entirely of grey lichens picked from the tree, and lined with bits of very fine roots or thin stalks of leaves.  Seen from beneath the tree the nest appears like a bunch of moss or lichens, and the smallness and frailty would lead one to suppose it incapable of holding two young birds of such size.  Externally the nest is compactly held together by being thickly pasted over with cobwebs.  The eggs, two in number, of a dull grey-green, closely and in part confluently dashed with streaks of dusky brown.”

This species, according to Mr. Hodgson’s notes and drawings, breeds in Nepal in the central districts of the hills from April to July, laying three or four eggs.  The nest is a broad shallow saucer, some 4 inches in external diameter and 1.75 inch in height; it is placed in a fork where two or three slender branches divide, to one or more of which it is firmly bound with vegetable fibres and grass-roots, and is composed of fine roots and vegetable fibres, and plastered over externally with pieces of lichen and moss.  The eggs are regular ovals, with a pale-greenish ground, blotched and spotted with a somewhat olivaceous brown.

A nest of this species found at Mongphoo (elevation 5500 feet) on the 15th June contained three eggs nearly ready to hatch off.  The nest was placed on a nearly horizontal fork of a small branch.  It is composed of very fine twigs loosely twisted together and coated everywhere exteriorly with cobwebs and scraps of grey lichen.  At the lower part, which, owing to the slope of the branch, had to be thicker, it is exteriorly about an inch and a half in height.  At the upper end it is only about half an inch high.  The shallow saucer-like cavity is about two and a half inches in diameter and about half an inch in depth.