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
Both Mr. Brooks and Captain Cock succeeded in securing the nests and
eggs of the Indian Great Reed-Warbler in Cashmere. Common as it is,
my own collectors failed to get eggs, though they brought plenty of
nests.
The nest is a very deep massive cup hung to the sides of reeds. A nest
before me, taken in Cashmere on the 10th June, is an inverted and
slightly truncated cone. Externally it has a diameter of 3¼ inches
and a depth of nearly 6 inches. It is massive, but by no means neat;
composed of coarse water-grass, mingled with a few dead leaves and
fibrous roots of water-plants. The egg-cavity is lined with finer and
more compactly woven grass, and measures about 1¾ inch in diameter and
2¼ inches in depth.
It breeds in May and June; at the beginning of July all the nests
either contained young or were empty. Four is the full complement of
eggs.
Mr. Brooks noted _in epist._:--"_Srinuggur, 10th June_. I went out
early this morning on the lake here to look for eggs of _Acrocephalus
stentoreus_, but it came on to rain so heavily that I only partially
succeeded. I took three nests, two with three eggs each, and one with
four young ones, the latter half-hatched. The eggs very much resemble
large and boldly-marked Sparrows' eggs. They are smaller than the eggs
of _A. arundinaceus_, but very similar. The latter have larger clear
spaces without spots than those of our bird. I neither saw nor heard
any other aquatic warbler."
Later, in a paper on the eggs and nests he had obtained in Cashmere,
he stated that this species "breeds abundantly in the Cashmere lakes.
The nest is supported, about 18 inches above the water, by three or
four reeds, and is a deep cup composed of grasses and fibres. The eggs
are four, very like those of _A. arundinaceus_, but the markings are
more plentiful and smaller."
Captain Cock writes to me that "the Large Reed-Warbler is very common
in the reeds that fringe all the lakes in Cashmere. It breeds in June,
builds a largish nest of dry sedge, woven round five or six reeds, of
a deep cup form, which it places about 2 feet above the water. It lays
four or five eggs, rather blunt ovals, equally blunt at both ends,
blotched with olive and dusky grey on a dirty-white ground."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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