CRA.TEROPODID-2G.

282. If olpastes bengalensis (Bljth). The Bengal Red-vented

Bulbul.

Pycnonotus pygaus (Hodgs,}, Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 93.

Molpastes pygmseus (Hodgs.), Itume, Rough Draft N. fy E. no. 461.

I have taken many nests of the Bengal Eed-vented Bulbul in
many localities, and while the birds vary, getting less typical as
you go westwards, the nests are all pretty much the same, though
the eastern birds go in rather more for dead leaves than the western.
Sikhim birds are very typical, and I will therefore confine myself
to quoting a note I made there.

Several nests taken at Darjeeling in June, at elevations of from
2000 to 4000 feet, each contained three or four, more or less
incubated, eggs. The nests were mostly very compact and rather
deep cups about 3^ inches in diameter and 2 inches in height, very
firmly woven of moss and grass-roots, but with a certain quantity
of dry and dead leaves, and here and there a little cobweb worked
into the outer surface. Sometimes a little fine grass was used as a
lining; but generally there was no lining, only the roots that were
used in finishing off the interior of the nests were rather finer
than those employed elsewhere. The egg-cavity is very large for
the size of the nest, the sides, though very firm and compact,
being scarcely above half an inch in thickness. The nests differ
very much in appearance, owing to the fact that in some all the
roots used are black, in others pale brown.

Mr. G-arainie says :—" I took two or three nests of this species
in the latter half of May at Mongpho, in Sikhim, at elevations of
3500 feet or thereabouts. They contained three eggs each, hard-
set. The nests were in trees, at a moderate height, and rather
flimsy structures; shallow cups, composed externally of fine twigs
and vegetable fibre, and generally some dead leaves intermingled,
especially towards their basal portions, and lined with the fine
hair-like stem portion of the flowering tops of grass. One nest
measured internally 2^ inches in diameter by nearly 1| inch in
depth; externally it was nearly 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches
in height. The eggs were of the usual type."

Mr. J. E. Cripps, writing from Eureedpore, Eastern Bengal,
says :—" Excessively common and a permanent resident; commits
great havoc in gardens amongst tomatoes and chillies, the red
colour of which seems to attract them. Builds its nest in very
exposed places and at all heights from two to thirty feet off the
ground, in bushes and trees. One nest I saw containing two
young ones, on the> 28th June, was built on a small date-tree
which stood on the side of a road along which people were passino-
all day, and within six feet of them. The nest was only five feet
from the ground, but the materials of which it was made and the
colour of the bird assimilated so perfectly with the bark of the
tree that detection was difficult. I have found the nests with
eggs from the 3rd of April to the end of June; dead leaves and
cobwebs were incorporated with the twigs and grasses in all nests.