193. Brachypteryx albiventris (Fairbank). _The White-bellied_
_Short-wing_.

Callene albiventris, _Fairb., Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 339 bis.

The Rev. S.B. Fairbank, to whom I have, owed much useful information
and many valuable specimens, kindly sent me the subjoined account of
the nidification of the White-bellied Short-wing in the Pulney Hills
at an elevation of about 6500 feet:--"In April, I found a nest in a
hole in the side of the trunk of a large tree some 2 feet from the
ground. The hole was just large enough for the nest, and was lined
with fine roots. I surprised the bird on her nest several times. There
were two eggs in the nest when I first found it that were 'hard-set'.
A month afterwards she laid two more in the same place, and I took
them in good condition. One egg measures 0.9 by 0.68 inch, and another
0.94 by 0.68 inch. The ground-colour is grey, with a tinge of green,
and it is thickly covered with small spots of bistre."

Mr. Blanford, who saw the eggs, which I never did, describes them
(and by analogy, I should infer more correctly) as "of an olive-brown
colour, darker at the larger end, measuring 0.93 by 0.63 inch."

An egg of this species sent me by Dr. Fairbank, measuring 0.93 by
0.66, is a somewhat elongated oval, slightly pointed towards the small
end. The shell is fine and fairly glossy; the ground-colour, so far as
this is discernible, is greyish green, but it is so thickly clouded
and mottled all over with a warm, brown, that but little of the
ground-colour is any where traceable, and the general result when the
egg is looked at from a short distance is that of a nearly uniform
olive-brown.

Captain Horace Terry also found the nest of this bird on the Pulney
Hills. He says:--"I met with it a few times in the big _shola_ at
Kodikanal, and got two nests, each with two fresh eggs; the first on
the 7th June in a hole in a tree between 4 and 5 feet from the ground,
a deep cup of green moss; the other, in a hole in the bank of a
path running through the _shola_ was of green moss and a few fine
fern-roots. Inside 1.75 inch deep and 2.5 inches across; outside a
shapeless mass of moss filling up the hole it was built in. The nest
was very conspicuous to any one passing by."

194. Brachypteryx rufiventris (Blyth). _The Rufous-bellied
Short-wing_.

Callene rufiventris, _Blyth. Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 496: _Hume, Rough
Draft N. & E._ no. 339.

I have been favoured with nests of the Rufous