Mr. J.R.  Cripps writing from Eastern Bengal says:—­“Pretty common.  Permanent resident.  Oftener found in the patches of cane brushwood jungle found in and around villages than in unfrequented jungle and thickets as Dr. Jerdon says.  I have, however, once seen it in a field of jute, which was alongside a village.  Its well-known note can be heard a long way off.  I have several times found nests in course of construction, but only once secured a clutch of eggs.  When the nests are being built, if the bush is at all disturbed the nest is deserted.  The earliest date on which I found a nest was the 1st April, 1878; it was half finished, and as I pulled the cane-leaves asunder to see if there were eggs, the birds deserted it.  After this I found four nests in cane-clumps on the sides of roads, but they were empty, and as the birds abandoned them in due course I despaired of getting any eggs; but on the 15th June, while going along a road, the edges of which were bounded by the small embankments natives throw up round their holdings, and which are always overgrown with ‘sone’ grass, I saw one of these birds with a straw in its bill disappear at the root of a small date-tree.  The nest could be discerned from the road.  On the 20th June I returned and found two fresh eggs; the nest was placed at the junction of the frond and the stem of the date-tree about five inches from the ground, and was an oval deep cup and measured externally 5 inches deep by 33/4 broad.  Egg-cavity 2 broad and 13/4 deep, composed exclusively of ‘sone’ grass with no lining.”

The eggs of this species are broad ovals with a tolerably fine gloss.  The ground-colour is pure white.  The whole of the larger end of the egg is pretty thickly speckled and spotted with brown, varying from an olive to a burnt sienna intermingled with little spots and clouds of pale inky purple, and similar spots and specks chiefly of the former colour, but smaller in size, scattered thinly over the rest of the egg.  In size they vary from 0.69 to 0.75 in length, and from 0.55 to 0.6 in breadth.

135.  Dumetia hyperythra (Frankl.). The Rufous-bellied Babbler.

Dumetia hyperythra (Frankl.), Jerd.  B. Ind. ii, p. 26; Hume, Rough Draft N. & E. no. 397.

The Rufous-bellied Babbler breeds throughout the Central Provinces, Chota Nagpoor, Upper Bengal, the eastern portions of the North-West Provinces, parts of Oudh, and even in the low valleys of Kumaon.

It lays from the middle of June to the middle of August, building a globular nest of broad grass-blades or bamboo-leaves some 4 or 5 inches in diameter, sparingly lined with fine grass-roots or a little hair, or sometimes entirely unlined.  The nest is placed sometimes on the ground amongst dead leaves, some of which are not unfrequently incorporated in the structure; sometimes in coarse grass or some little shrub a foot or two from the ground, but by preference, according to my experience, in amongst the roots of a bamboo-clump.