Captain Hutton remarks:--"This is very common in Mussoorie at all
seasons, and congregates into large and noisy flocks, turning up the
dead leaves, and screaming and chattering together in most discordant
concert. It breeds in April and May, placing the nest in the forks of
young oaks and other trees, about 7 or 8 feet from the ground,
though sometimes higher, and fastening the sides of it firmly to the
supporting twigs by tendrils of climbing-plants. It is sometimes
composed externally almost entirely of such woody tendrils, intermixed
with a few other twigs, and lined with black hair-like fibres of
mosses and lichens; at other times it is externally composed of coarse
dry grasses and leaves of different kinds of orchids, and lined with
fibres, the materials varying with the locality. The eggs are of a
deep and beautiful green, shining as if recently varnished, and three
in number. In shape they taper somewhat suddenly to the smaller end,
which may almost be termed obtusely pointed. The size 1·19 by 0·87
inch. The usual number of eggs is three, though sometimes only one or
two are found; but only on one occasion out of more than a dozen nests
have I found four eggs. The old bird will remain on the nest until
within reach of the hand."
From Murree, Colonel C.H.T. Marshall writes:--"This was the most
beautiful egg taken this season, being of a rich, deep, glossy,
greenish-blue colour. The nest is composed of fresh ivy-twigs, with
the leaves attached, tightly woven together. The birds breed on small
trees, not high up, at the end of a branch. While their nests were
being examined, they came round in flocks to see what was happening,
chattering and making that peculiar laughing note from which this
genus takes its name. They are even gregarious in the breeding-season,
and all the nests were found pretty near each other about 6000 feet
up."
The nest sent me by Colonel Marshall is a broad, shallow cup, or
saucer as I should perhaps call it, some 6 inches in diameter, with
a central depression of at most 1·5 inch, below which the nest is
an inch or 1·5 in thickness. It is very loosely put together, and
composed interiorly of moderately fine dry twigs and roots, but
exteriorly it is completely wound round with slender green ivy-twigs
to which the leaves are attached. It has no lining or pretence for
such.