Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/417

Rh Himalayan form iu being more weakly marked, less handsome eggs and also in being generally a shorter, blunter oval. Thirty eggs average 26.6 × 19.5 mm. and vary in length between 28.3 × 19.3 mm. and 25.0 × 19.2 mm. and in breadth between 27.0 × 20.6 and 26.3 × 19.0 mm. They breed from February to July.

Habits. Those of the genus, Tbey are never found in the plains and seldom below 2,000 feet, even in winter. Mr. Rhodes Morgan records having seen these Bulbuls "migrating in vast flights, numbering several thousands, in the Bolumputty Valley in July. They were flying westwards towards Malabar."

They frequent both the outskirts of forests and heavily-wooded districts and also small spinneys and sholas standing in the hollows of grass-covered hills.

Genus CERASOPHILA Bingham, 1900.

This genus was created by Bingham for the reception of a very remarkable Bulbul, probably nearest to the genus Microscelis (Hypsipetes auct.). Like that genus the tarsi are short and non-scutellate and the tail is rather long and forked. The culmen is more curved than in Microscelis but it differs principally from that genus in having a bare unfeathered patch of skin round the eye. The under tail-coverts are brightly coloured as in Molpastes and Otocompsa.

(390) Cerasophila thompsoni.

Vernacular names. None recorded.

Description. "The whole head and neck snow-white, the white of these parts abruptly defined from the back and breast, and extending further down on the upper back than on the sides of the neck and breast: the back, ramp, upper tail-coverts, wing-coverts, scapulars, the outer webs of the two inner tertiaries, the breast, sides, and stomach a clear ash-grey; the primary wing-feathers, the secondaries, the tertiaries, with the exception noted above, and the tail hair-brown; vent and under tail-coverts light bright chestnut; the under wing-coverts and axillaries, the lower portion of the stomach, and some of the lower feathers on the thighs pale grey with a wash of light chestnut."

Colours of soft parts. "Bill, legs and feet coral-red, claws horny: a bare patch of skin round the eyes, conspicuously wider below the eyes than above it, greyish tinged with yellow, the eyelids with a rim of bright vermilion-red. Iris whitish-yellow to pale yellow."

The sexes are alike in plumage and differ only very slightly in size.

Measurements. "♂. Length 7.8 inches, wing 3.8, tail 3.8, tarsus 0.7, bill from gape 0.85. ♀. Length 7.8 inches, wing 3.7,