The eggs are singularly lovely.  In shape they are elongated ovals, generally very obtuse at both ends, and many of them exhibiting cylindrical or pyriform tendencies.  The shell is very fine and fairly glossy, and the ground-colour is a most beautiful clear pale sea-green in some, greenish blue in others.  The character of the markings is more that of the Buntings than of this family.  There are a few strongly marked deep maroon, generally more or less angular, spots or dashes, principally about the large end, and there are a few spots and tiny clouds of pale soft purple, and then there are an infinite variety of hair-line hieroglyphics, twisted and scrawled in brownish or reddish purple, about the egg.  The markings are nowhere as a rule crowded, and towards the small end are usually sparse and occasionally wholly wanting.  In some eggs a bad pen seems to have been used to scribble the pattern, and every here and there instead of a fine hair-line there is a coarse thick one.

The eggs are pretty constant in size and colour, but here and there an abnormally pale specimen, in which the green has almost entirely disappeared, is met with.  In length they vary from 0.98 to 1.15, and in breadth from 0.7 to 0.82, but the average of thirty-one eggs is 1.04 by 0.74.

88.  Trochalopterum subunicolor, Hodgs. The Plain-coloured Laughing-Thrush.

Trochalopteron subunicolor, Hodgs., Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 44; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 417.

The Olivaceous or Plain-coloured Laughing-Thrush breeds, according to Mr. Hodgson’s notes, in the central region of Nepal from April to June.  It nests in open forests and groves, building its nest on some low branch of a tree, 2 or 3 feet from the ground, between a number of twigs.  The nest is large and cup-shaped:  one measured externally 5.5 inches in diameter and 3.38 in height; internally 2.75 deep and 3.12 in diameter.  The nest is composed externally of grass and mosses lined with soft bamboo-leaves.  Three or four eggs are laid, unspotted greenish blue.  One is figured as 1.07 by 0.7.

90.  Trochalopterum variegatum (Vig.). The Eastern Variegated Laughing-Thrush.

Trochalopteron variegatum (Vig.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 45; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 418 (part).

The Eastern Variegated Laughing-Thrush breeds only at elevations of from 4000 to 7000 or 8000 feet, from Simla to Nepal, during the latter half of April, May, and June.  The nest is a pretty compact, rather shallow cup, composed exteriorly of coarse grass, in which a few dead leaves are intermingled; it has no lining, but the interior is composed of rather finer and softer grass than the exterior, and a good number of dry needle-like fir-leaves are used towards the interior.  It is from 5 to 8 inches in diameter exteriorly, and the cavity from 3 inches to 3.5 in diameter and about 2 inches deep.  The nest is usually placed in some low, densely-foliaged branch of a tree, at say from 3 to 8 feet from the ground; but I recently obtained one placed in a thick tuft of grass, growing at the roots of a young Deodar, not above 6 inches from the ground.  They lay four or five eggs.