Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/218

 180 TlMALIIUiE. tail about 110 to 115 mm.; tarsus about 31 mm.; culmen about 17 mm.

Distribution. Hills soutb of the Brahmaputra, Manipur, Lushai and Chin Hills.

Nidification. This Laughing-Thrush breeds throughout its range between 3,000 and 8,000 feet, making a deep, compact, cup-shaped nest of leaves, roots, bamboo leaves and grass, and always with more or fewer tendrils and a little moss. The lining is of roots and moss roots or fern-rachides, and the inner cup usually measures about 4 in, x 2-75 in. or less and the outer about 6 in. X 5 in. Most nests are placed close to the ground in dense tangles of creepers and vines or thick bushes, but they sometimes select higher bushes or small saplings for nesting purposes. Eggs maybe found from May to July. These are either two or three in number and are a pale unspotted blue with a soft satiny texture, almost glossle-!s though intensely smooth. 100 eggs average 26-0 X 19 -2 mm.

Habits. This is not a gregarious bird and I have generally seen it in pairs only, nor is it as noisy as most of its relations though it has some quite sweet conversational and call-notes. It keeps almost entirely to thick undergrowth of forests or to the ground itself in bracken and brambles. Those I examined had fed on insects only, chiefly a small grasshopper and a very odoriferous little bug, but doubtless they also eat seeds. They are found up to 8,000 feet or over and never descend below some 3,000 feet. Trochalopterum lineatum. Key to tSubspecies. A. Head and niautJe asliy with dusky streaks. II. I^ower pluniHge rufescent. «'. Grey margins to feathers narrow. . T. 1. lineatum, i^. 180. b'. Grey margins to feathers broad .... T. I. yriseicentior, p. 181. b, ijQwer plumage paler and more grey. c'. Ear-coverts chestnut T. I. gilgit, p. 182. d'. Ear-coverts pale rusty T. I. ziaratensis, p. 182. B. Head and mantle reddish brown with glistening black shaft-stripes T. I. imbricatum, p. 18o.


 * Cinclosoma lineatum Vigors, P. Z. S., 1831, p. 56 (Nepal).

Trochalopterum litieatum. Blanf. & Oates, i, p. 101.

Vernacular names. None recorded.

Description. Forehead, crown, nape and mantle dark ashy streaked with dusky, the shafts black; lower back and wing- coverts reddish brown, the shafts white; rump and ujjper tail-