y shallow cups, built with
slender twigs and sticks, some 6 inches in external diameter, and from
less than 3 inches to nearly 4 inches in height, with a nest-cavity
some 4 inches across and 2 inches deep, lined with grass and
moss-roots. Once only I found a nest almost entirely composed of
grass, and with no lining but fine grass-stems.

The eggs vary from four to six, but this latter number is rarely met
with.

Colonel C.H.T. Marshall writes:--"This is one of the commonest birds
about Murree; we always found it well to the front during our rambles,
chattering about in the trees. They breed from the middle of April
till the end of June. We have taken their eggs between the 20th April
and the 16th June. They keep above 5000 feet. I never observed any in
the lower ranges. The nest is not a difficult one to find, being large
and of loose construction; from 15 to 30 feet up a medium-sized tree
close to the trunk or sometimes in a large fork. They never seem to
build in the spruce firs which abound about Murree. They are by no
means shy birds, and hop about the trees close by while their nest is
being examined. Five is the ordinary number of eggs, which differ very
much in appearance and size: the longest I have measures 1.25 and the
shortest 1.1. Some are paler, some darker; some are of a uniform pale
greenish-ash colour with a darker ring, while others are thickly
speckled and freckled with a darker shade of the same colour. Some
lack the odd ink-scratch which is so often to be seen on the larger
end, and is the most peculiar feature of the egg, while a few have it
at the thinner end.

"I should describe the average type as a long egg for its breadth;
ground-colour greenish ashy with very thick sprinklings of spots of a
darker and more greenish shade of the same colour, a ring of a darker
dull olive round the large end, on which are one or two lines that
look like a haphazard scratch from a fine steel pen."

From Dhurmsala Captain Cock wrote to me that this was "a most common
bird at Dhurmsala; appears in large flocks during the winter, and
often mixes with _Garrulus bispecularis_ and _Urocissa flavirostris_.
Pairs off about the end of April, when nidification begins. Builds a
rather rough nest of sticks, generally placed on a tall sapling oak
near the top; sometimes among the thicker branches of a pollard oak:
outer nest small twigs roughly put together; inner nest dry roots and
fibres, rather deep cup-shaped. Eggs