“The nest is a bulky structure, some 6 or 8 inches in external diameter, and 4 inches in height, composed chiefly of coarse reeds, becoming finer interiorly till the egg-cup is reached, where the grasses employed are tolerably fine and neatly interwoven.  The cavity itself is more than a hemisphere, the diameter being 3 inches and the depth about 2 inches.

“The eggs are of a beautiful blue colour, rather pointed at one end.”

Colonel Tickell has the following note on the nidification of this species in the Asiatic Society Journal, 1848, p. 301:—­

“Burra phenga.—­Nest hemispherical, of grasses rather loosely interwoven; generally on bushes in jungle.  Eggs two to four; rather lengthened shape; clear, full, verditer blue.—­June.”

Mr. J.R.  Cripps writes of this bird in Eastern Bengal:—­“Very common, and a permanent resident, keeping to grass-fields in small parties of seven to ten.  Very noisy.  On the 2nd December, 1877, I found a nest with three slightly-incubated eggs in a small babool bush which stood in a ‘sone’ grass-field.  The nest was a deep cup, whose foundation was a few leaves over which sone-grass was woven rather loosely.  Lining of fine grass-roots.  The nest was placed in amongst some coarse grass which grew up in the centre of the bush, and was three feet from the ground.  External height 4, diameter 41/4, internal diameter 21/2, depth 21/2 inches.  Both Messrs. Marshall and Hume in their works on ‘Birds’ Nesting’ give March and September as the two periods for these birds to lay, but the clutch I found were exceptionally late.”

Mr. J. Inglis writes from Cachar:—­“The Striated Reed-Babbler is exceedingly common during the whole year.  It breeds from March onwards, making its nest in longish grass.”

The eggs closely resemble those of A. caudata both in colour and shape, but they are conspicuously larger.  To judge from Hewitson’s figure, for I have never seen the egg, they in shape, size, and colour closely resemble the eggs of Accentor alpinus, some I have being very slightly larger, and others exactly the same size as the figure referred to.

In length the eggs vary from 0.78 to 1.01, and in breadth from 0.65 to 0.75, but the average of a large series is 0.88 by 0.7.

105.  Argya caudata (Dumeril). The Common Babbler.

Chatarrhaea caudata (Dum.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 67; Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E no. 438.

The Common Babbler breeds throughout India, not, however, ascending any of our many mountain-ranges to any great elevation.

They lay pretty well all the year round; at any rate from early in March, to early in September their eggs are common.  Mr. W. Blewitt took a nest at Hansie on the 3rd January, and single nests are recorded by others as found in October, December, and February.  They certainly have two broods a year, and perhaps more, the first being hatched from March to May, the second from June to August.