40	CORVID7E.
was too small to admit my hand, I commenced to enlarge the
entrance with a chisel, the old bird sitting closer than ever the
whole time. Finding all attempts to drive her off the eggs fruitless,
I tried to poke her off: with a piece of stick, whereupon she stuck
her head into one of the far corners and sulked. I then inserted
my hand with some difficulty and drew her gently out of the hole,
but as soon as she caught sight of me, she commenced fighting in
the most pugnacious manner, digging her claws and beak into my
hand, and finally breaking loose, flying, not away as might have been
expected, but straight back into the hole again, to commence sulking
once more. Again I drew her out, keeping a firm hold of one leg
until I got her well away from the hole, when I released her. I
then extracted five fresh eggs from the hole by means of a small
round net attached to the loop end of a short piece of wire. The
nest was a simple pad of human and cows' hair, with a few horse-
hairs interwoven, and one or two bits of snake's skin in the lining,
having a thin layer of green moss and thin strips of inner bark
below as a foundation—in fact a regular Tit's nest. The eggs, of
the -usual parine type, were considerably larger than the eggs of
P. atriceps, broad ovals, slightly smaller at one end than the other,
having a white ground spotted moderately thickly all over with
reddish chestnut; no zone or cap, but in some eggs more freely
marked at one end (either small or large end) than the other, some
of the markings almost amounting to blotches and the spots as a
rule rather large."
Messrs. Davidson and Wenden remark of this bird in the
Deccan:—" Specimens of this Tit were procured at Lanoli in ,
August and at Egutpoora in March. They certainly breed at these
places, as in September, at the latter place, W. observed two parent
birds with four young ones capable of fiying out very short
distances."
And Mr. Davidson further states that it is "common through-
out the district of Western Kandeish. I saw a pair building in
the hole of a large mango tree at Malpur in Pimpalnir in the end
of May."
44. Lophophanes melanoloplms (Vig.).    The Crested Black Tit.
Lophophanes melanolophus (Yig.)< Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 273: Hume,
Rough Draft N. $ E. no. 638.
The Crested Black Tit breeds throughout the Lower Himalayas
vest of Nepal, at elevations of from 6000 to 8000 feet.
The breeding-season lasts from March to June, but the majority
have laid, I think, for the first hatch by the end of the first week
in April, unless the season has been a very backward one. They
usually rear two broods.
They build, so far as I know, always in holes, in trees, rocks,
and walls, preferentially in the latter. Their nests involve gener-
ally two different kinds of work—the working up of the true nests