Mr. Oates writes:—­“Breeds abundantly throughout Pegu in June, and probably in the other months of the rains up to September.”

The eggs vary a good deal in size and shape, and very much in colouring.  They are mostly of a very broad oval shape, very obtuse at the smaller end.  Some are, however, slightly pyriform, and some a little elongated.  There are two very distinct types of coloration:  one has a pinkish-white ground, thickly and finely mottled and streaked over the whole surface with more or less bright and deep brick-dust red, so that the ground-colour only faintly shows through, here and there, as a sort of pale mottling; in the other type the ground-colour is pinkish white, somewhat sparingly, but boldly, blotched with irregular patches and eccentric hieroglyphic-like streaks, often Bunting-like in their character, of bright blood- or brick-dust red.  The eggs of this type, besides these primary markings, generally exhibit towards the large end a number of pale inky-purple blotches or clouds.  There is a third type somewhat intermediate between these, in which the ground-colour, instead of being finely freckled all over as in the former, or sparingly blotched as in the latter, is very coarsely mottled and clouded, as if clumsily daubed over by a child, with a red intermediate in intensity between that usually observable in the two first-described types.  Combinations of these different types of course occur, but fully two thirds can be separated distinctly under the first and second varieties.  Though much smaller, many of the eggs recall those of the English Robin.  The eggs have often a fine gloss.  I have one or two specimens so uniformly coloured that, though perhaps slightly shorter and broader in form, they might almost pass for the eggs of Cetti’s Warbler.

In length they vary from 0.65 to 0.8, and in breadth from 0.53 to 0.68; but the average of seventy-seven eggs measured is 0.73 by 0.59.

140.  Pyctorhis nasalis, Legge. The Ceylon Yellow-eyed Babbler.

Pyctorhis nasalis, Legge, Hume, Cat. no. 385 bis.

Colonel Legge writes in his ’Birds of Ceylon’:—­“In the Western Province this Babbler commences to breed in February; but in May I found several nests in the Uva district near Fort Macdonald; and that month would thus seem to be the nesting-season in the Central Province.  The nest is placed in the fork of a shrub, or in a huge tuft of maana-grass, without any attempt at concealment, about 3 or 4 feet from the ground.  It is a neatly-made compact cup, well finished off about the top and exterior, and constructed of dry grass, adorned with cobwebs or lichens, and lined with fine grass or roots.  The exterior is about 21/2 inches in diameter by about 2 in depth.  The eggs are usually three in number, fleshy white, boldly spotted, chiefly about the larger end, with brownish sienna; in some these markings are inclined to become confluent, and are at times overlaid with dark spots oil brick-red.  They are rather broad ovals, measuring, on the average, from 0.76 to 0.79 inch in length, by 0.56 to 0.59 in breadth.”