d is a pretty conspicuous zone of black or blackish-brown
and pale inky purple spots and small blotches, and similar spots and
blotches of the same colour are somewhat sparsely scattered over the
rest of the surface of the egg. The egg measured 0.98 by 0.73.

488. Tephrodornis pondicerianus (Gm.). _The Common Wood-Shrike_.

Tephrodornis pondiceriana (_Gm.), Jerd B. Ind._ i, p. 410; _Hume,
Rough Draft N. & E._ no. 265.

The Common Wood-Shrike lays during the latter half of March and April.
This at least is, I think, the normal season, but Mr. W. Blevutt found
a nest at Hansee on the 2nd of June containing two fresh eggs.

I have only taken one nest myself (though I have had many others
sent me), and that was on the 2nd of April at Chundowah in Jodpoor,
Rajpootana. The nest was in the fork of a ber tree (_Zizyphus
jujuba_), on a small horizontal bough, about 5 feet from the ground.
It was a broad shallow cup, somewhat oval interiorly, with the
materials very compactly and closely put together. The basal portion
and framework of the sides consisted of very fine stems of some
herbaceous plant about the thickness of an ordinary pin. It was lined
with a little wool and a quantity of silky fibre; exteriorly it was
bound round with a good deal of the same fibre and pretty thickly
felted with cobwebs. The egg-cavity measured 2.5 inches in diameter
one way and only 2 the other way, while in depth it was barely .86.
The exterior diameter of the nest was about 4 inches and the height
nearly 2 inches. It contained three fresh eggs, of a slightly
greyish-white ground, very thickly spotted and speckled with yellowish
brown, dark umber-brown, and a pale washed-out inky-purple. In all,
the spots were thickest in a zone round the large end, where they
became more or less confluent. I have, however, a large series of
these nests, and taking them as a whole, although much more massive,
they remind one no little of those of _Rhipidura albifrontata_ and
_Terpsiphone paradisi_ and even _Aegithina tiphia_. They are broad
shallow cups, measuring internally 21/4 inches across and about 7/8 inch
in depth. They are placed in a horizontal fork of a branch, and are
composed of vegetable fibre and fine grass-roots, thickly coated
externally with cobwebs, by which also they are fixed on to branches,
and lined internally with silky vegetable down or fibre. Externally
their colour always approximates closely to the bark of the branch on
which they