y in _small_ trees, be
the kind chosen what it may. Sometimes a high hedgerow, such as our
great Customs hedge, is chosen, and occasionally a solitary caper or
stunted acacia-bush.

The nests (almost invariably fixed in forks of slender boughs) are
neat, compactly and solidly built cups, the cavities being deep and
rather more than hemispherical, from 2.25 to fully 3.5 inches in
diameter, and from 1.5 to 2 inches in depth. The nest-walls vary from
0.5 to 1.25 inch in thickness. The composition of the nest is various.
The following are brief descriptions which I have noted from time to
time:--

"Compactly woven of grass-stems and a few fine twigs, but with more
or less wool, rag, cotton, or feathers incorporated; there _is no
lining_.

"The nest was rather massive, externally composed of wool, rags,
cotton, thread, and feathers, and a little grass; the cavity rather
neatly lined with fine grass.

"Composed almost entirely of cobweb, with a few soft feathers, wool,
string, rags, and a few pieces of very fine twigs compactly woven. The
interior was lined with fine straw and fibrous roots."

Elsewhere I have recorded the following note on the nidification of
this species:--

"This bird, or rather birds of this species, have been laying ever
since the middle of April, but nests were then few and far between,
and now in July they are common enough. The nest that we had just
found was precisely like twenty others that we had found during the
past two months. Rather deep, with a nearly hemispherical cavity; very
compactly and firmly woven of fine grass, rags, feathers, soft twine,
wool, and a few fine twigs, the whole entwined exteriorly with lots of
cobwebs; and the interior cavity about 13/4 inch deep by 21/4 in diameter,
neatly lined with very fine grass, one or two horsehairs, shreds of
string, and one or two soft feathers. The walls were a good inch in
thickness. The nest was placed in a fork of a thorny jujube or ber
tree (_Zizyphus jujuba_), near the centre of the tree, and some 15
feet from the ground. It contained four fresh eggs, feebly coloured
miniatures of the eggs of _L. lahtora_, which latter so closely
resemble those of _L. excubitor_ that if you mixed the eggs, you could
never, I think, certainly separate them again. The eggs exhibit the
zone so characteristic of those of all Shrikes. They have a dull pale
ground, not white, and yet it is difficult to say what colour it is
that tinges it; in these four