Nests and eggs of Indian birds : rough draft / by Allan Hume.

  • Allan Hume
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nests and eggs of Indian birds : rough draft / by Allan Hume. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    most dense at the small end. In shape, the one egg1 is a nearly perfect ellipse, slightly pointed towards the small end, but the other egg is a very broad oval, very obtuse at the large end and scarcely less so at the smaller extremity. Subsequently, I have seen many of these eggs and I may say generally that they are broad ovals, in some specimens somewhat pyriform and in many a good deal pointed towards the small end. The texture of the shell is much that of the egg of the common Kite ; rather rough and glossless. The ground is bluish or greenish, more rarely reddish white; in some thinly and scantily speckled and spotted with reddish brown and red; in some sparingly clouded and dingily blotched with pale purple or purplish brown, in others with the markings denser and richer, forming at times a confluent brick-dust red cap at the larger end, mottled with deep red, and the whole of the rest of the surface thickly streaked and speckled and spotted with brownish red and purple. In length, they vary from 2*62 to 2*88 inches and in breadth from 2T2 to 2*25, but the average of a dozen eggs is 2*78 by 2’2 inches nearly. 39 bis.—iSpilornis minor, Hume.* The Lesser Indian Harrier Eagle received which I have as yet, only from Ellore, Raipoor, Sumbulpoor and Dacca and intermediate localities, differs percep- tibly from S. cheela of Upper India; the wings of the latter vary in the males from 185 to nearly 20 inches, and in the females from 19*5 to nearly 21; while in this present species they vary in the males from 17 to barely 18 inches, and in the females from 18 to 18*5 inches ; the lower parts also are somewhat less conspicuously occelated, and the barring on the breast, so conspicuous in adult cheela, is almost entirely wanting. Mr. Blanford, to whom I owe one speci- men, suggested that this might be S. spilogaster of Blyth, and I myself at one time adopted this view, but Blyth himself identifies this with S. Elgini of Tytler, which however he then considered the same as bacha, and in none of which the wing exceeds 15 inches ; moreover, Blyth remarks of his species that it has a “ less developed crest, and much less of black upon the crown, the tail markings quite different, having the black subterminal band conspicuously less broad; ” now this is in no way applicable to our present species, which, taking the relative sizes of the two into consideration, has quite as fully a developed crest, quite as much black in the crown, and very nearly, if not quite as broad, a subterminal tail-band. This species cannot possibly therefore be S. spilogaster. The present species breeds in the neighbourhood of Raipoor, where, in May, Mr. F. R. Blewitt obtained a nest containing two eggs. He says : “ When the nest was robbed, the female was sitting on the eggs, and the male was perched on a branch near to the nest. The nest was near the top of a large Peepul tree, between the forks of a branch, overhanging a small stream. The nest was composed of prickly and other twigs, some 20 inches in diameter and 4 or 5 in thickness. It was densely lined with green leaves, Peepul and < s * Sin™ Oiis: was in type. Lord Walden has suggested that if distinct, this species must stand S. allidus, Cuv.
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