h Draft N. & E._ no. 418 (part).

The Eastern Variegated Laughing-Thrush breeds only at elevations of
from 4000 to 7000 or 8000 feet, from Simla to Nepal, during the latter
half of April, May, and June. The nest is a pretty compact, rather
shallow cup, composed exteriorly of coarse grass, in which a few
dead leaves are intermingled; it has no lining, but the interior is
composed of rather finer and softer grass than the exterior, and
a good number of dry needle-like fir-leaves are used towards the
interior. It is from 5 to 8 inches in diameter exteriorly, and the
cavity from 3 inches to 3.5 in diameter and about 2 inches deep. The
nest is usually placed in some low, densely-foliaged branch of a tree,
at say from 3 to 8 feet from the ground; but I recently obtained one
placed in a thick tuft of grass, growing at the roots of a young
Deodar, not above 6 inches from the ground. They lay four or five
eggs.

The first egg that I obtained of this species, sent me by Sir E.C.
Buck, C.S., and taken by himself near Narkunda, late in June, out of
a nest containing two eggs and two young ones, was a nearly perfect,
rather long oval, and precisely the same type of egg as those of _T.
erythrocephalum_ and _T. cachinnans_, but considerably smaller than
the former. The ground-colour is a pale, rather dingy greenish blue,
and it is blotched, spotted, and speckled, almost exclusively at the
larger end, and even there not very thickly, with reddish brown.
The egg appeared to have but little gloss. Other eggs subsequently
obtained by myself were very similar, but slightly larger and rather
more thickly and boldly blotched, the majority of the markings being
still at the large end.

The colour of the markings varies a good deal: a liver-red is perhaps
the most common, but yellowish brown, pale purple, purplish red, and
brownish red also occur. Here and there an egg is met with almost
entirely devoid of markings, with perhaps only one moderately large
spot and a dozen specks, and these so deep a red as to be all but
black.

The eggs vary from 1.07 to 1.15 in length, and from 0.76 to 0.82 in
breadth.

91. Trochalopterum simile, Hume. _The Western Variegated
Laughing-Thrush_.

Trochalopterum simile, _Hume; Hume, Cat._ no. 418 bis.

Messrs. Cock and Marshall write from Murree:--"The nidification of
this _Trochalopterum_ was apparently unknown before. We found one nest
on the 15th June, about twenty feet up a spruce-fir at the extre