Later he wrote to me that this species “breeds up at Dhurmsala in April and May.  It chooses an old cleft or natural cavity in a tree, usually the hill-oak, and makes a nest of wool and fur at the bottom of the cavity, upon which it lays five eggs much like the eggs of Parus monticola.  Perhaps the blotches are a little larger, otherwise I can see no difference.  I noticed on one occasion the male bird carry wool to the nest, which, when I cut it out the same day, I found contained hard-set eggs.  I used to nail a sheepskin up in a hill-oak, and watch it with glasses, during April and May, and many a nest have I found by its help. Parus atriceps, P. monticola, Machlolophus xanthogenys, Abrornis albisuperciliaris, and many others used to visit it and pull off flocks of wool for their nests.  Following up a little bird with wool in its bill through jungle requires sharp eyes and is no easy matter at first, but one soon becomes practised at it.”

The eggs are regular, somewhat elongated ovals, in some cases slightly compressed towards one end.  The ground is white or reddish white, and they are thickly speckled, spotted, and even blotched with brick-dust red; they have little or no gloss.

They vary in length from 0.7 to 0.78, and in breadth from 0.52 to 0.55; but I have only measured six eggs.

43.  Machlolophus haplonotus (Bl.). The Southern Yellow Tit.

Machlolophus jerdoni (Bl.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 280.

Col.  E.A.  Butler writes:—­“Belgaum, 12th Sept., 1879.—­Found a nest of the Southern Yellow Tit in a hole of a small tree about 10 feet from the ground.  My attention was first attracted to it by seeing the hen-bird with her wings spread and feathers erect angrily mobbing a palm-squirrel that had incautiously ascended the tree, and thinking there must be a nest close by, I watched the sequel, and in a few seconds the squirrel descended the tree and the Tit disappeared in a small hole about halfway up.  I then put a net over the hole and tapped the bough to drive her out, but this was no easy matter, for although the nest was only about 3/4 foot from the entrance, and I made as much noise as a thick stick could well make against a hollow bough, nothing would induce her to leave the nest until I had cut a large wedge out of the branch, with a saw and chisel, close to the nest, when she flew out into the net.

“The nest, which contained, to my great disappointment, five young birds about a week old, was very massively built, and completely choked up the hollow passage in which it was placed.  The foundation consisted of a quantity of dry green moss, of the kind that natives bring in from the jungles in the rains, and sell for ornamenting flower vases, &c.  Next came a thick layer of coir, mixed with a few dry skeleton-leaves and some short ends of old rope and a scrap or two of paper, and finally a substantial pad of blackish hair, principally human, but with cow- and horse-hair intermixed, forming a snug little bed for the young ones.  The total depth of the nest exteriorly was at least 7 inches.