Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/435

Rh This bird is a black-headed crestless form of the last bird; the general colour above is also decidedly paler.

Colours of soft parts. Iris brown; bill and legs black.

Measurements. Just about the same size as the White-cheeked Bulbul, the wing running from 86 to 93 mm.; the bill, however, is much smaller than in either the preceding or the following bird, measuring only about 12 to 13 mm. In shape it is rather stout and blunt instead of slender as in leucogenys or very stout and heavy as in humii.

Distribution. Sind; Cutch; Guzerat; Rajputana; Punjab; the N.W. Provinces South to Etawa and Central India as far East as Jhansi, Saugor and Hoshangabad.

Nidification. This differs in no way from that of the White-cheeked Bulbul but the eggs average about 21.0 × 15.9 mm.

Habits. This bird is merely a plains form of M. l. leucogenys, which is a hill Bulbul. It is also more exclusively a bird of civilization, breeding round about villages, gardens and orchards and frequenting lightly-wooded and cultivated country rather than those parts where the woods are at all extensive.

(407) Molpastes leucogenys humii.

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Vernacular names. Not distinguished from the last.

Description. Difiers from the White-eared Bulbul in having a short, full crest and in having both forehead and crest practically black, with only very faint pale edgings. There is no white eyebrow; the upper plumage is a grey-brown, with no trace of the olive tinge so often present in M. l. leucogenys.

Colours of soft parts as in leucogenys but the bill is always deep black.

Measurements as in the other races but the culmen measures about 15 mm. and is blunt and very stout and heavy. The wing varies from 82 to 93 mm.

Distribution. Oates named this bird from a specimen in the British Museum series which he said differed from all the rest, but a more careful examination shows that in this series there are about twenty other specimens in every respect identical with the type. These birds are all from a small area in the country round Jhelum, Attock, Bannu and Kohat, on the extreme N.W. Frontier.

Nidification. Similar to that of the other subspecies.

Habits. This appears to be a bird of the lower bills of the N.W. Frontier intermediate between the range of M. l. leucogenys on the higher hills and M. I. leucotis in the better-wooded plains. It is a resident bird, of course, frequenting and breeding in the gardens and in the scanty vegetation and hedges round about cultivated areas.