Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 2).djvu/108

94 fulvous, and the secondaries with white patches as in the male, but reduced in extent and slightly fulvous.

Legs and feet black ; bill blackish brown to black, yellow or yellowish at gape in the male and sometimes on base of lower mandible also ; iris deep brown (Hume}.

Length about 6 ; tail 2'5 ; wing 2*9; tarsus '9 ; bill from gape '65.

Distribution. A winter visitor to Bhutan ; Assam ; the Khasi hills ; Cachar ; Sylhet ; the Naga hills ; Manipur ; Thayetmyo. In winter this species extends to Java and Timor, and in summer it is found in Siberia, Mongolia, Japan, and China.

642. Ruticilla erythronota. Eversmanns Redstart.

Sylvia erythronota, Eversm. Add. Pall. Zoogr. Ross-Asiat. fasc. ii, p. 11 (1841).

Ruticilla rufogularis, Moore, P. Z. S. 1854, p. 27, pi. lix ; Horsf. Sf M. Cat. i, p. 306. Ruticilla erythronota (Eversm.}, Hume, S. F. vii, p. 389 ; id. Cat. no. 498 bis ; Scully, Ibis, 1881, p. 445 ; Biddulph, Ibis, 1882, p. 277 ; Seebohm, Cat. B. M. v, p. 348.

Coloration. Male. After the autumn moult the forehead, crown, nape, and hind neck are pale blue, nearly concealed by broad slaty- grey fringes ; lores, cheeks, point of chin, sides of the head and of the neck, produced round the upper back as a collar, black with narrower slaty-grey fringes ; back, scapulars, throat, breast, and flanks chestnut fringed with grey ; rump and tail chestnut, the middle pair of feathers black, as also the tip of the outer web of the outermost feather, and the terminal portion of the shaft of all the feathers ; lesser wing-coverts black, tipped with white ; median coverts and the inner greater coverts pure white ; remaining coverts and the quills brown edged with pale fulvous, the primary- coverts very largely white ; abdomen and under tail-coverts pale fulvous ; under wing-coverts and axillaries white with black bases. In summer the fringes are all dropped.

Female. Forehead, crown, nape, back, scapulars, and upper part of rump brown ; lower part of rump and upper tail-coverts chest- nut ; tail as in the male ; wing-coverts and quills brown, broadly edged vith fulvous white ; no white on wing ; a ring of pale feathers round the eye ; lower plumage greyish brown, tinged with dull orange in places, and paler on the abdomen.

In the dry state the legs and bill are black. Length about 6'5 ; tail 2-9 ; wing 3*4 ; tarsus *9 ; bill from gape -6.

Distribution. A winter visitor to every portion of Kashmir, extending on the west to Hazara and Afghanistan and on to Asia Minor. The most easterly locality from which I have seen a specimen of this bird is Kotokhai in the Himalayas. In summer this Redstart is found in Turkestan, and even in Mongolia and Siberia, if R. alaschanica, Prjev., should prove to be the same species, as is probable.