SCJEOEHTNCHUS.	43
an ordinary pin, very carefully curved to the shape of the nest.
The coarser exterior grass appears to have been used when dry ;
but the fine grass, with which the interior is so densely lined, is
still green. It is the most perfectly hemispherical nest 1 ever saw.
Exteriorly it is exactly 6 inches in diameter and 3 in height;
internally the cavity measures 4*5 in diameter and 2-25 in depth.
The egg is a regular moderately elongated oval, slightly com-
pressed towards the smaller end. The shell is fine and thin, and
has only a faint gloss. The ground-colour is a dull white, and it
is sparsely blotched, streaked, and smudged with pale yellowish
brown, besides which, about the large end, there are a number of
small pale inky purple spots and clouds, looking as if they were
beneath the surface of the shell.
The single egg preserved measures 1-11 by OS.
A nest sent me by Mr. Mandelli was found, he says, in May, in
Native Sikhirn, in a cluster of Ringal (hill-bamboo) at an elevation
of nearly 10,000 feet. It is a large, rather broad and shallow cup,
the great bulk of the nest composed of extremely fine hair-like
grass-stems, obviously used w^rhen green, and coated thinly exteriorly
with coarse blades of grass, giving the outside a ragged and untidy
appearance. The greatest external diameter is 5-5, the height 3*2,
but the cavity is 4*5 in diameter and 2-2 in depth, so that, though
owing to the fine material used throughout except in the outer
coating the nest is extremely firm and compact, it is not at all a
massive-looking one.
60. Scseorliynclius ruficeps (BL). The Larger Red-headed Crow-Tit.
Paradoxornis ruficeps, BL, Jerd. B. 2nd. ii_? p. 5.
Mr. Gainmie writes from Sikhim :—" In May, at 2000 feet
elevation, I took a nest of this bird, which appears to have been
rarely, if ever, taken by any European, and is not described in your
Eough Draft of ' Nests and Eggs.^7 It was seated among, and
fastened to, the spray of a bamboo near its top, and is a deep,
compactly built cup, measuring externally 3*5 inches wide and the
same in depth ; internally 2*7 wide by 1-9 deep. The material used
is particularly clean and new-looking, and has none of the second-
hand appearance of much of the building-stuffs of many birds.
The outer layer is of strips torn off large grass-stalks and a very
few cobwebs ; the lining, of fine fibrous strips, or rather threads,
of bamboo-sterns. There were three eggs, which were ready for
hatchiug-off. They averaged 0*83 in. by 0-63 in. I send }^rou
the nest and two of the eggs.
" Both Jerdon and Tickell say they found this bird feeding on
grain and other seeds, but those I examined had all confined their
diet to different sorts of insects, such as would be found about
the flowers of bamboo, buckwheat, &c. Probably they do eat a few
seeds occasionally, but their principal food is certainly insects.
Very usually, in winter especially, they feed in company with