cimens this is more or less obliterated
by a reddish or pinkish tinge, as if the colour of the markings had
run; in some the ground is a sort of reddish olive, in some pinky
white. The markings are large blotches and spots, often forming zones
or caps about the larger end, where they seem almost always to be most
conspicuous, as they vary in colour from an intense burnt-sienna which
is almost black, through a dingy maroon, and again to a dull, somewhat
pale reddish brown; here and there individual eggs exhibit a hair-line
or two, or a hieroglyphic-like mark, but these are the exceptions.

The eggs vary in length from 0.53 to 0.64 inch, and in breadth from
0.42 to 0.45; but the average of fourteen eggs is 0.58 by 0.44.

Very constantly smears or clouds of a paler shade than the blotches
cover large portions of the surface between these. Occasionally all
the markings are smeared and ill-defined, and in some eggs they are
almost entirely wanting, and nothing but a scratch or two about the
large end is to be seen.

Family LANIIDAE

Subfamily LANIINAE.

469. Lanius lahtora(Sykes). _The Indian Grey Shrike_.

Lamus lahtora (_Sykes), Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 400.
Collyrio lahtora, _Sykes, Hume, Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 256.

The Indian Grey Shrike lays from January to August, and occasionally
up to October, but the majority of my eggs have been obtained during
March or April.

It builds, generally, a very compact and heavy, deep, cup-shaped nest,
which it places at heights of from 4 to 10 or 12 feet from the ground
in a fork, towards the centre of some densely growing thorny bush
or moderate-sized tree, the various carounders, capers, plums, and
acacias being those most commonly selected.

As a rule it builds a new nest every year, but it not unfrequently
only repairs one that has served it in the previous season, and even
at times takes possession of those of other species.

The nest is composed of very various materials, so much so that it is
difficult to generalize in regard to them. I have found them built
entirely of grass-roots, with much sheep's wool, lined with hair and
feathers, or solidly woven of silky vegetable fibre, mostly that of
the putsun (_Hibiscus cannabinus_), in which were incorporated little
pieces of rag and strips of the bark of the wild plum (_Zizyphus
jujuba_); but I think that most commonly thorny twigs, coarse grass,
and grass-roots form the body of the nest, while the cavity is lin