Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/332

288 blades of grass but with these are mixed a certain amount of dead leaves, fern- and bracken-fronds and weeds; tendrils and roots are used to bind the materials together. The lining is of roots or bamboo leaves and sometimes a little moss is used inside and outside the nest. The sites selected may be either in bamboo and scrub or in deep forest. The eggs number two, three or four and have the ground-colour anything from pure white to pale sienna and the markings consist of tiny specks of dark sienna-brown, often forming a ring or cap but profusely scattered elsewhere also. A few eggs with white ground have the specks still darker and finer. The shape is generally a short oval; pyriform eggs not being rare. They are very fragile and have no gloss. Sixty eggs average 18.3 × 14.3 mm.

Habits. This is a still more cheerful, lively little bird than those of the genus Schœniparus and when fluttering about a bush on which insects are plentiful remind one of Warblers of the genus Phylloscopus. They do not, I think, ever feed on the ground nor on the other hand do they ascend any height into trees but I have seen them in grass and scrub occasionally and in bamboos often; when in deep forest, which they most affect, they prefer places where there are glades or breaks such as are made by streams, jungle-tracks etc. rather than the denser, darker portions. They keep up a soft twittering the whole time they are feeding.

(302) Pseudominla castaneiceps castaneiceps.

Minla castaneiceps Hodgs., Ind. Rev., 1838, p. 88 (Nepal).

Sittiparus castaneiceps. Blanf. & Oates, i, p. 172.

Vernacular names. None recorded.

Description. Forehead, crown and nape chestnut-brown, the feathers of the forehead with broad white streaks, those of the crown and nape with pale rufous streaks; a broad line through the eye and a narrow moustachial streak black; remainder of sides of head white; back, scapulars, rump and smaller wing-coverts olive-green tinged with fulvous; greater wing-coverts and primary-coverts black; winglet black on the outer webs, white on the inner; quills olive-green, the earlier primaries edged with hoary-grey, the latter and the secondaries edged with chestnut at the base; innermost secondaries broadly edged with olive-green on both webs; below from chin to under tail-coverts pale fulvous-white, the sides of breast and body ochraceous; under wing-coverts white.

Colours of soft parts. Iris red-brown to crimson; bill, above dark horny, the lower mandible dull fleshy, sometimes yellowish, especially at base; legs and feet dingy greenish yellow or yellowish-horn.