wing notes of its nests:--

"1st-8th May, 1869. Nest and three eggs taken at Khandalla, above the
Bhore Ghat.

"12th May, 1871. Nest and four eggs at Poona.

"16th-18th May, 1871. Nest and four eggs at Khandalla. This nest was
in a corinda bush, placed about 11/2 feet from the ground.

"13th May, 1873. A clutch of young birds left the nest this morning at
Poona.

"19th May, 1873. I found a nest of half-fledged young birds this day
at Poona. The tree was almost denuded of leaves, and the heat of the
sun being very intense, the parent bird was nevertheless sitting
close. Its eyes were closed, and it was gasping hard. One of the young
ones had crawled out from under the parent, and was sitting on the
edge of the nest, also gasping hard.

"I do not exactly gather from your notes in the 'Rough Draft' what
form the spots usually take. In my nest taken on the 12th May all
four eggs had the zone quite as distinct as the eggs of a Fan-tailed
Flycatcher. The seven eggs taken from two nests at Khandalla, on the
other hand, had not the least appearance of a zone, but were spotted,
after the manner of Sparrows' eggs. In both the latter cases I saw the
old bird fly off the nest and alight on a tree a few yards off.

"I remember one little Shrike of this species which used to come down
every day to pick up crumbs of bread and pieces of potatoe put out for
the Sparrows. (Being a true naturalist I love Sparrows.)

"My brother on one occasion saw one of these Shrikes trying to catch a
garden lizard--not a gecko.

"Of course you know that the young of this handsome and brightly
coloured Shrike have a plain and curiously marked plumage, reminding
one a little of the _pateela_ Partridge. I never saw this Shrike in
Bombay."

The eggs of this, the smallest of all our Indian Shrikes, differ in no
particular, so far as shape, colour, and markings go, from those of
its larger congeners; that is to say, for every egg of this species
an exactly similar one might be picked out from a large series of _L.
lahtora_ or _L. erythronotus_; but at the same time there is no doubt
that pale-creamy and pale-brownish stone-coloured grounds predominate
more amongst the eggs of this species than in those of the two
above-named. The markings are also, as a rule, more minute and less
well-defined; indeed, in the large series I possess there is not one
which exhibits the bold sharp blotches common in the eggs of _L.
lahtora_, and not uncommon in those