e Mr. Mandelli sent me a nest of this
species found at Ging near Darjeeling on the 27th April. It contained
four fresh eggs, and was placed on branches of a very large tree about
22 feet from the ground. The tree was situated at an elevation of
about 3000 feet. The nest is a large massive cup, 5 inches in exterior
diameter and rather more than 3 in height. It is composed of tendrils
of creepers and stems of herbaceous plants, to many of which the
bright yellow amaranth flowers remain attached; and all over the sides
and bottom masses of flower-stems of grass with the white silky down
attached are thickly plastered, which, intermingled as this white down
is with the glistening yellow flowers, produces a very ornamental
effect, and looks as it the bird had really had an eye to decoration.

Inside the nest is entirely lined with very fine grass-stems. The nest
is everywhere about an inch thick, and the cavity about 3 inches in
diameter by nearly 2 deep.

Eggs said to belong to this species kindly sent me by Mr. Mandelli,
whose men obtained them on the 27th April, are very Shrike-like in
their appearance. In shape they vary from broad to ordinary ovals,
generally somewhat compressed towards the small end. The shell is
white but almost glossless. The ground-colour is a dead white, and
they are profusely speckled and spotted with yellowish brown, paler in
some eggs, darker in others. In all the eggs the markings are by far
the most numerous towards the large end. Two eggs measure 0.95 and
0.91 in length by 0.74 and 0.72 in breadth respectively.

487. Tephrodornis sylvicola, Jerdon. _The Malabar Wood-Shrike_.

Tephrodornis sylvicola, _Jerd., Jerd. B. Ind._ i, p. 409; _Hume, cat._
no. 204.

Major M. Forbes Coussmaker has furnished me with the following note on
the nidification of the Malabar Wood-Shrike:--"I took the nest of this
bird on April 13th, 1875. It was composed of fine roots and fibres,
neatly woven into a shallow cup-like nest, secured to the fork of
a horizontal bough and fixed in its place with cobweb, and covered
externally with lichen corresponding to that on the bough. It measured
4.2 inches in diameter externally, and 2.4 internally and .7 deep.
Both parent birds were shot. The eggs two in number, rather round,
coloured white with faint inky and brown spots."

One of these eggs is a very regular oval, the shell fine but
glossless, the ground-colour white, with a faint greenish tinge; round
the large en