Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Birds Vol 2).djvu/76

62 replaced by brown and the upper tail-coverts are uniform pale rufous ; the lores, ear-coverts, and round the eye are dusky ; supercilium, chin, and throat pale fulvous ; remainder of lower plumage pale orange-rufous ; no white on the side of the neck ; under wing-coverts and axillaries fulvous. In summer the edges of the feathers are much worn down, and the plumage is paler.

The nestling has the upper plumage brown, the head and neck streaked with fulvous, the back broadly edged with fulvous ; lower part of the rump and upper tail-coverts bright ferruginous ; the lower plumage fulvous, with brown mottlings on the breast. After the first autumn moult the young male has the lower plumage very bright chestnut, but resembles the adult in other respects.

Bill, legs, and feet black ; iris dark brown.

Length about 5; tail 1-9; wing 2-8; tarsus '8; bill from gape "65.

This species differs from the European P. rubicola in having the upper tail-coverts streakless, and the under wing-coverts and axillaries very narrowly tipped with white.

Although I have assigned Pallas's name to the Indian Bush-Chat, I am by no means satisfied that the Siberian and Indian birds are identical, nor is it certain that any of the Bush-Chats which visit the plains of India in the winter cross over to the north of the Himalayas in the summer. The Indian Bush-Chat breeds so abundantly at all moderate levels in the Himalayas that it is not improbable that the Himalayas form the northern limit of its range. Siberian specimens of Bush-Chats are not very numerous, but all I have seen are so intensely black on the head and back, so intensely rufous on the breast, and, moreover, so small, the wing not exceeding 2-6 in length, that I have not been able to match them, with any breeding bird from the Himalayas, except in the case of one bird from the interior of Sikhim. This small dark race occurs also in Turkestan.

Distribution. A winter visitor to every portion of the Empire except the southern portion of the peninsula of India south of Mysore. The most southern point from which I have seen a spe- cimen of this species is Belgaum ; but Hume says (S.F. x, p. 389) that it is reported common from South-west Mysore. It occurs in the Andamans.

In the summer this species is found throughout the Himalayas, from Afghanistan to Assam, up to 5000 feet. Should the Indian bird prove identical with the Sibeiian form, its range will extend to Japan and China on the east and to Northern E-ussia on the west. Specimens from. Abyssinia are quite inseparable from Indian birds.

Habits, &c. Breeds in the Himalayas at all heights up to about 5000 feet, constructing a nest of grass and rnoss in small shrubs or in holes of walls, and laying four or five eggs, which are pale green marked with brownish red, and measure about '7 by "55.