TESHBODOBNIS. 333

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 are
placed; they are not thin basket-like structures like those of
JEgitJiina or RJiipidura, but are fully |- inch thick at the sides and
probably f inch thick at the bottom.

Colonel Gr. F. L. Marshall writes :—" The Common Wood-Shrike
builds in the Saharunpoor district in the latter half of March, the
young being hatched early in April. The bird is common; but
owing to the small size and bark-like colour of its nest, the latter
is very difficult to find. On the 8th April I fired at a specimen
and missed it; it then flew off and settled in a fork of another
tree about 30 feet from the ground. On looking carefully with an
opera-glass, I found that it was sitting on its nest. I drove it off
and shot it. The nest was very small and shallow, cup-shaped, and
wedged in between two small boughs at their junction, and not
appearing either above or below. The egg-receptacle was 2| inches
in diameter. The nest was made of grass and bits of bark, beautifully
woven together and bound with cobwebs, and exactly resembling
the boughs "between which it was placed, or, I might say, wedged
in. The eggs, four in number, were slightly set; the}r were small
for the bird, and of a rather round oval shape; the colour was a
creamy-yellow ground, thickly spotted and blotched with the dif-
ferent shades of brown and sienna, the bulk of the spots tending
to form a zone near the thick end, as in the typical form of the eggs
of the Lamiclce, and a number of faint purple blotches underlying
the zone/'

Major C. T. Bingham says :—" I have only found three nests of
this bird, and these at Delhi. At Allahabad it was not very common.
It is a difficult nest to find, being generally well hidden in the
forks of leafy trees. All three nests I got were of one type—shallow'
saucers, made of vegetable fibre matted together into n soft felt-
like substance. In two of the nests I found three and in the third
one egg. These are thickly spotted and blotched with brown and a
washed-out purple, on a pale greyish-yellow ground. The average
measurements of the seven eggs are—length 0*77, breadth 0*61."

Colonel E. A. Butler writes from Sind:—

"Hyderabad, 19th April, 1878.—Noticed two young birds scarcely
able to fly; fresh eggs were laid, therefore, about the beginning of
March. On the 20th April near the same place I found a nest
containing young birds. It consisted of a neat little cup composed
of dry grass smeared all over exteriorly with cobwebs, and fixed in
a fork of one of the outer branches of a large babool-tree about
10 feet from the ground. The nest was very small for the size of
the bird, and had I not seen the old bird on it I should have
taken it for a nest of JRJiipidura albifrontata."

The late Captain Beavaii remarked that this bird " appears to
come to the Maunbhoom District for the purpose of breeding. I