The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1Hume, Allan Octavian
Philosophy
The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1
Hume, Allan Octavian
Birds -- India; Birds -- Nests
Captain Hutton remarks:--"This species, the only one that visits
Mussoorie, arrives from the Doon about the middle of March, and
retires again about September. It is abundant during the summer
months, and breeds from the latter end of April till the middle of
June, making a very neat nest, which is placed in the bifurcation of
a horizontal branch of some tall tree, usually an oak tree; it
is constructed of grey lichens gathered from the trees, and fine
seed-stalks of grasses, firmly and neatly interwoven; with the latter
it is also usually lined, although sometimes a black fibrous lichen is
used; externally the materials are kept compactly together by being
plastered over with spiders' webs. It is altogether a light and
elegant nest. The shape is circular, somewhat shallow; internal
diameter 3 inches. The eggs are three or four, generally the latter
number, and so variable in colour and distribution of spots that until
I had got several specimens and compared them narrowly, I was inclined
to think we had more than one species of _Dicrurus_ here. I am,
however, now fully convinced that these variable eggs belong to the
same species. Sometimes they are dull white with brick-red spots
openly disposed in form of a rude ring at the larger end; at other
times the spots are rufescent claret, with duller indistinct ones
appearing through the shell; others are of a deep carneous hue,
clouded and coarsely blotched with deep rufescent claret; while again
some are faint carneous with large irregular blotches of rufous clay
with duller ones beneath the shell."
Some of Captain Hutton's eggs which he sent me were clearly those of
_Hypsipetes psaroides_ (of which also be sent me specimens), and the
fact is that in thick foliage where the Red-bill is not seen nothing
is easier than to mistake this bird for _D. longicaudatus_. I have
taken a great many of these nests, and I never found eggs other than
of the two types to be below described.
Colonel G.F.L. Marshall writes:--"In Kumaon this species breeds from
4000 to 5000 feet above the sea; the eggs are laid in the last week of
May. I have never seen a nest at Naini Tal itself (6000 to 7000 feet),
but at Bheem Tal (4000 feet) I found numerous nests within three days,
in the first week of June; all without exception had young. The next
season I visited the place in the last week of May, and found the eggs
just laid.
"The nests were of the usual _Dicrurus_ type, wedged in a fork at
heights varying from fifteen to fifty feet from the ground, but as far
as my experience goes always in conspicuous places and generally on
trees almost or quite bare of leaves. The nests are usually only to be
obtained by sawing off the bough they are built on."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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