Miss Cockburn writes from the Nilghiris:—­“On the 17th May, 1873, a nest of this bird was found.  It was formed in a perpendicular hole in a dried stump of a tree, about 15 feet in height.  The nest consisted entirely of slight sticks lined with fine grass, no soft material being added as a finish, and the whole structure went to pieces when removed.  This nest contained three eggs, their colour white, with a few dark and light brown spots and blotches all over, and a strongly marked ring round the thick end.

“The birds frequently returned to the place while the eggs were being taken, till one of them was shot.”

Mr. J. Davidson remarks:—­“This bird is very local in the Tumkur districts in Mysore, and I have only found it in three or four gardens.  I knew it had been breeding (from dissection) since March, but till to-day (May 9th) I could not find its nest.  To-day, however, I saw four or five birds perpetually flying round and round a very ragged old cocoanut-tree, the highest in that part of the garden, and determined to send a man up.  Two birds, however, at that moment lit on one branch and I shot them both, and they proved to be fully-fledged young ones.  I sent the man up, however, and was rewarded by his announcing two old nests and a new one containing one egg.  The nests were near the trunk of the tree on the horizontal leaves, and were formed of thin roots and a little grass and were very slight.  The egg, which is large for the size of the bird, is creamy white, with a broad ring round the larger end formed of blotches of orange, brown, and purple, and in the cap within the ring there are a number of faint purple spots.  The egg was perfectly fresh, and the old birds defended it by swooping down upon the man; and I can’t help thinking that both the young birds and the new nest belonged to one pair of birds, and that as soon as their first brood was fledged they had commenced to lay again.”

A nest taken by Mr. Gammie on the 24th April, at an elevation of about 3500 feet in Sikhim, was placed on a dead horizontal limb near the top of a large tree.  It contained four eggs slightly set; it is a somewhat shallow cup, interiorly 3 inches in diameter by nearly 11/2 in depth, and composed almost entirely of fine roots, pretty firmly interwoven.  It has no lining, but at the bottom exteriorly it is coated partially with a sort of plaster, composed apparently of strips of bark and vegetable fibre partially cemented together in some way.

The egg sent me by Miss Cockburn is of quite the same type as those found by Mr. Gammie, but it is a trifle longer, measuring 1.0 by 0.7, and the colouring is much brighter.  The ground is a sort of creamy white.  There is a strongly marked though irregular zone round the large end of more or less confluent brownish rusty patches (amongst which a few pale grey spots may be detected), and a good many spots and small blotches of the same are scattered about the whole of the rest of the surface of the egg.