Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 1).djvu/93

Rh Nidification. Breeds from the middle of April to early June at heights between 4,000 and 8,000 feet, making a shallow cup-shaped nest of twigs and roots, more rarely of grass, lined with moss, fern rachides, or fine roots. It is generally placed in a small oak or other tree, 10 to 30 feet from the ground in thin forest. The eggs vary from three to six, generally four or five. In colour they vary from pale yellowish stone to pale greenish, finely stippled everywhere with olive-brown and, more seldom, with a few hair-lines of black. They measure about 28·6 × 22·6 mm.

Habits. The Black-throated Jay is a bird of forests but of the thinner more open parts, venturing often into comparatively unwooded tracts. Like the European Jay its voice is loud, harsh and penetrating, and it is a noisy bird, more especially in the mornings and evenings in the breeding season. It is omnivorous, eating fruit and insects, small mammals, birds and reptiles and other birds' eggs. Its flight is like that of its European cousin and it indulges in the same flappings and contortions when on the wing.


 * Garrulus leucotis Hume, P. A. S. B., 1874, p. 106 (Kaukaryit); Blanf. & Oates, i, p. 39.

Vernacular names. None recorded.

Description. Forehead and front of crown white, with brown shaft-streaks; anterior crown and crest black; lores, feathers under the eyes, ear-coverts, chin, throat and front of neck white; a broad moustachial streak black; back, rump and scapulars vinous brown, paler on the rump; breast the same as the back; abdomen and flanks paler vinous brown; upper and under tail-coverts and vent white; tail black, barred with ashy towards the base; lesser and median wing-coverts like the back; winglet, primary-coverts, the outer greater coverts and the outer webs of most of the secondaries on their basal halves, bright blue banded with black; remainder of greater coverts and quills black, the primaries with some portions of the outer web grey; the inner-most secondary partially chestnut.

Colours of soft parts. Iris hazel-brown to dark brown or wood-brown; bill almost black with pale or whitish tip; legs horny white to dull flesh-colour, claws a little darker.

Measurements. Total length about 300 to 325 mm.; wing 165 to 177 mm.; tail about 130 mm.; tarsus about 45 mm.; culmen about 26 mm.