Captain Cock told me that he “found several nests in May and June in Cashmere.  The first nest I found was in a natural cavity high up in a tree, containing three eggs, which I unfortunately broke while taking them out of the nest.  The interior of the cavity was thickly lined with fur from some small animal, such as a hare or rat.  I found my second nest close to my tent in a cleft of a pine, quite low down, only 3 feet from the ground.  I cut it out and it contained five eggs of the usual type—­broad, blunt little eggs, white, with rusty blotches.”

Colonel G.F.L.  Marshall writes:—­“I have only found two nests of this species in Naini Tal, both had young (two in one nest, in the other I could not count) on the 25th April; they were at about 7000 feet elevation, built in holes in walls, the entrance in both cases being very small, having nothing to distinguish it from other tiny crevices, and nothing to lead any one to suppose that there was a nest inside.  It was only by seeing the parent birds go in that the nest was discovered.”

The eggs of this species are moderately broad ovals, with a very slight gloss.  The ground-colour is a slightly pinkish white, and they are richly blotched and spotted, and more or less speckled (chiefly towards the larger end), with bright, somewhat brownish red.

The markings very commonly form a dense, almost confluent zone or cap about the large end, and they are generally more thinly scattered elsewhere, but the amount of the markings varies much in different eggs.  In some, although they are thicker in the zone, they are still pretty thickly set over the entire surface, while in others they are almost confined to one end of the egg, generally the broad end.

These eggs vary much in size and in density of marking.  The ordinary dimensions are about 0.61 by 0.47, but in a large series they vary in length from 0.57 to 0.72, and in breadth from 0.43 to 0.54.  The very large eggs, however, indicated by these maxima are rare and abnormal.

47.  Lophophanes rufinuchalis (Bl.). The Simla Black Tit.

Lophophanes rufinuchalis (Bl.).  Jerd.  B. Ind. ii. p. 274.

Mr. Brooks informs us that this Tit is common at Derali and other places of similar elevation.  “I found a nest under a large stone in the middle of a hill foot-path, up and down which people and cattle were constantly passing; the nest contained newly-hatched young.  This was the middle of May.”

Dr. Scully, writing of the Gilgit district, tells us that this Tit is a denizen of the pine-forests, where it breeds.

Finally Captain Wardlaw Ramsay, writing in the ‘Ibis,’ states that this Tit was breeding in Afghanistan in May.

Subfamily PARADOXORNITHINAE.

50.  Conostoma aemodium, Hodgs. The Red-billed Crow-Tit.

Conostoma aemodium. Hodgs., Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 10; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 381.