Rhopodytes viridirostris (Jerd.).
The Small Green - hilled Malkoha.

Zanclostomus viridirostris, Jerd., Jerd. B. Ind. i, p. 340.

Mr. A.G. Cardew, C.S., writing from Madras, says : -" I obtained a single nest of this bird on the 10th March, 1885, near Wandiwash in the North Arcot District. It was a slight structure, made of a few twigs and with a few green leaves as lining, and was placed about 5 feet from the ground in a thorn - bush near a stream. The nest contained two dull chalky - white eggs, in shape very round ovals, measuring 1.15 by 1.0." "

Mr. Henry Wenden writes  : - " My shikary found a nest of this bird in the middle of July 1875, in the dense jungle - covered Granite Hills about Smiles N.E. of Nulwar station, which is on the S.E. branch of the G.I.P. Railway, 384 miles from Bombay.

"He shot, sexed, and stuffed both male and female."

He has for a long period been working for me in collecting specimens, eggs, &c., and has been fairly well trained as to what points to observe and how useless eggs are to me unless all information regarding them is ' pucca,' so, although I must regret that the following account of the nidification of this species is not from my personal observation, 1 feel that I may offer it to you as being reliable.

“The nest was situated about 6 feet above the ground in the tri - pronged fork of a very dense prickly bush of from 8 to 10 feet in height, and growing in a thicket of similar and other bushes on the bank of a nullah, running between two steep jungle - clad hills. Is was simply a roughly constructed mass of dry sticks and twigs, with a small shallow cavity lined scantily with dry neem - leaves, which had the appearance of having been green when first placed in the nest and not of having been picked dry and withered from the ground. Barring the leaves, he said the nest was more like that of a Dove's both in size and shape than any other nest he knew. It was built in the very thickest part of the bush, entirely concealed from view by the foliage, until carefully searched for."

It contained two eggs. Dull glossless white, of a finer texture than those of Centrococcyx rufipennis, though they possess the same chalky covering. In shape they are long oval, slightly compressed at one end, and both ends very blunt or round.   Size 1.12 x 0.87.

"I think this species is tolerably abundant at Nulwar, as I have more than once seen it with the Southern Sirkeer and other birds settle in trees close to my position when 1 have been waiting for a line of beaters to come up."