“Both Jerdon and Tickell say they found this bird feeding on grain and other seeds, but those I examined had all confined their diet to different sorts of insects, such as would be found about the flowers of bamboo, buckwheat, &c.  Probably they do eat a few seeds occasionally, but their principal food is certainly insects.  Very usually, in winter especially, they feed in company with Gampsorhynchus rufulus.  Rather curious that the two Red-heads should affect each other’s society.”

The eggs are broad ovals, rather cylindrical, very blunt at both ends.  The shell fine, with a slight gloss.  The ground is white, and it is rather thinly and irregularly spotted, blotched, and smeared in patches with a dingy yellowish brown, chiefly about the larger end, to which also are nearly confined the secondary markings, which are pale greyish lilac or purplish grey.

61.  Scaeorhynchus gularis (Horsf.). The Hoary-headed Crow-Tit.

Paradoxornis gularis, Horsf., Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p, 5.

A nest sent me by Mr. Mandelli as belonging to this species was found, he tells me, at an elevation of 8000 feet in Native Sikhim on the 17th May.  It was placed in a fork amongst the branches of a medium-sized tree at a height of about 30 feet from the ground.  The nest is a very massive cup, composed of soft grass-blades, none of them much exceeding .1 inch in width, wound round and round together very closely and compactly, and then tied over exteriorly everywhere, but not thickly, with just enough wool and wild silk to keep the nest perfectly strong and firm.  Inside, the nest is lined with extremely fine grass-stems; the nest is barely 4 inches in diameter exteriorly and 2.5 in height; the egg-cavity is 2.4 in diameter and 1.2 in depth.

Mr. Mandelli sends me an egg which he considers to belong to this species, found near Darjeeling on the 7th May.  It is a broad oval, very slightly compressed at one end; the shell dull and glossless; the ground a dead white, profusely streaked and smudged pretty thickly all over with pale yellowish brown; the whole bigger end of the egg clouded with dull inky purple and two or three hair-lines of burnt sienna in different parts of the egg.  The egg measures 0.8 by 0.61.

Two eggs of this species, procured in Sikhim on the 17th May, are very regular ovals, scarcely at all pointed towards the lesser end.  The ground-colour is creamy white, and the markings consist of large indistinct blotches of pale yellow; round the large end is an almost confluent zone or cap of purplish grey, darker in one egg; they have no gloss, and both measure 0.82 by 0.61.

Family CRATEROPODIDAE.

Subfamily CRATEROPODINAE.

62.  Dryonastes ruficollis (J. & S.) The Rufous-necked Laughing-Thrush.

Garrulax ruticollis (J. & S.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 38; Hume, Rough
Draft N.& E. no. 410.

Of the Rufous-necked Laughing-Thrush, Mr. Blyth remarks:—­“Mr. Hodgson figures the egg of a fine green colour.”