Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/411

Rh brown, the inner secondaries and the outer webs of the others rufescent; tail rufescent, the outer webs tinged with greenish and the outer feathers tipped with whitish; lores and sides of the head jellow, the latter feathers tipped with dusky; chin and throat whitish; lower plumage yellow, the breast and sides of the body tinged with ashy; under tail- and wing-coverts yellow.

Colours of soft parts. "Legs and feet pale bluish or pinkish brown or salmon-fleshy; claws pale plumbeous blue; lower mandible and edge of the upper pale plumbeous; ridge of culmen and tip of upper mandible black; rest of the upper mandible dark plumbeous, sometimes horny brown; iris pale umber or snuffy-brown to dark brown" (Hume & Davison).

Measurements. Total length about 180 mm.; wing 70 to 77 mm.; tail about 70 to 75 mm.; tarsus 15 mm.; culmen about 15 mm.

Distribution. The extreme South of Tenasserim and S.E. Siam to the South of the Malay Peninsula. The Sumatran and Borueau form has been separated as Tricholestes c. viridis.

Nidification. Two eggs of the form viridis in the collection of Mr. J. Davidson and taken by a correspondent of Herr M. Kuschel in W. Java are very like the eggs of Iole icterica. The ground-colour is a pronounced pink, thickly mottled all over with a darker brownish pink, the mottling only a little darker than the ground-colour, so that at a short distance they look uniform. In shape they are long ovals and they measure about 23.2 × 16.0 mm.

Habits. Davison records that "This little Bulbul goes about in small parties of five or six, keeping to the brushwood and following each other about from bush to bush, uttering all the while a soft twittering note. In its habits it approaches much nearer the Timaliine birds than the Bulbuls, like them hunting systematically the foliage and branches of the brushwood and smaller trees… One specimen I shot was quite alone and was perched on a dead twig, where it kept expanding and closing its tail spasmodically and bobbing about exactly like a Flycatcher. Their food consists almost exclusively of insects, though they do occasionally eat a few small berries. They are very tame birds and their phnnage apparently never in good condition, so that it is impossible ever to make up a really good specimen."

Genus ALOPHOIXUS Oates, 1889.

This genus was created by Oates for a species previously placed in the genus Criniger. It differs from that genus in having no crest and from Tricholestes in not having such long back-hairs. Bill, wings and tail are very similar to those of Criniger.

There is but one species at present referred to this genus.