The first egg that I obtained of this species, sent me by Sir E.C.  Buck, C.S., and taken by himself near Narkunda, late in June, out of a nest containing two eggs and two young ones, was a nearly perfect, rather long oval, and precisely the same type of egg as those of T. erythrocephalum and T. cachinnans, but considerably smaller than the former.  The ground-colour is a pale, rather dingy greenish blue, and it is blotched, spotted, and speckled, almost exclusively at the larger end, and even there not very thickly, with reddish brown.  The egg appeared to have but little gloss.  Other eggs subsequently obtained by myself were very similar, but slightly larger and rather more thickly and boldly blotched, the majority of the markings being still at the large end.

The colour of the markings varies a good deal:  a liver-red is perhaps the most common, but yellowish brown, pale purple, purplish red, and brownish red also occur.  Here and there an egg is met with almost entirely devoid of markings, with perhaps only one moderately large spot and a dozen specks, and these so deep a red as to be all but black.

The eggs vary from 1.07 to 1.15 in length, and from 0.76 to 0.82 in breadth.

91.  Trochalopterum simile, Hume. The Western Variegated Laughing-Thrush.

Trochalopterum simile, Hume; Hume, Cat. no. 418 bis.

Messrs. Cock and Marshall write from Murree:—­“The nidification of this Trochalopterum was apparently unknown before.  We found one nest on the 15th June, about twenty feet up a spruce-fir at the extremity of the bough.  Nest deep, cup-shaped, solidly built of grass, roots, and twigs; the bird sits close.  Eggs light greenish blue, sparingly spotted with pale purple, the same size as those of Merula castanea.”

92.  Trochalopterum squamatum (Gould). The Blue-winged Laughing-Thrush.

Trochalopteron squamatum (Gould), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 46; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 420.

From Sikhim my friend Mr. Gammie writes:—­“I have never as yet found more than one nest of the Blue-winged Laughing-Thrush, and this one was found on the 18th May at Mongphoo, at an elevation of about 3500 feet.  The nest was placed in a bush (one of the Zingiberaceae), growing in a marshy place, in the midst of dense scrub, at a height of about 4 feet from the ground, and was firmly attached to several upright stems.  It was composed of dry bamboo-leaves, held together by the stems of delicate creepers, and was lined with a few black fibres.  It was cup-shaped, and measured externally 5.7 in diameter by 3.6 in height, and internally 3.7 in width by 2.6 in depth.  The nest contained three eggs, which were unfortunately almost ready to hatch off, so that three is probably the normal number of the eggs.”