Colours of soft parts. Iris brown; legs slate-grey or bluish slaty; bill fleshy yellow.
Measurements. Length about 100 mm.; wing 44 to 46 mm.; tail about 52 mm.; culmen about 5 mm.
Distribution. Hills south of the Brahmaputra from the Khasia Hills to the Eastern Naga Hills.
Nidification. This little bird breeds in the Khasia and N. Cachar Hills in May and June, making a very neat little, cup-shaped nest of tine grasses and shreds of bamboo-leaves well fastened together with cobwebs and lined with the finest grass-stems. It is placed low down in thick bushes or tangles of creepers, both in scrub jungle and evergreen forest. The eggs are generally three in number and are of a rather deep hedge-sparrow's egg-blue, unspotted. In shape they are rather broad ovals with the smaller end broad and blunt. Twenty eggs average 15·7 × 11·9 mm.
Habits. Blyth's Suthora seems to be found at elevations between 2,000 and 4,000 feet, wandering about in small flocks in the denser undergrowth in evergreen forest or, less often, in scrub and secondary growth. They are great skulkers and very hard to get a shot at as they climb and scramble through the lower parts of the bushes, only showing themselves for a second or two as they feebly flit from one bush to another. Their call-note is a very plaintive little bleat, constantly uttered by each member of the flock, and they also have a variety of low cheeps and "chirrs." They feed both on insects and grass-seeds, etc.
Hellmayr ('Genera Avium,' p. 73) considers daflaensis separable from true poliotis in that it has the feathers of the chin and throat with longer white fringes than has the latter bird. I cannot separate the two races with the material available.
(95) Suthora poliotis humii.
The Black-fronted Suthora.
- Suthora humii Sharpe, Cat. B. M., vii, p. 487 (1883) (Darjeeling); Blanf. & Oates, i, p. 64.
Vernacular names. None recorded.
Description. Similar to S. p. poliotis, but has the ear-coverts orange-chestnnt and the flanks and vent orange-fulvous.
Colours of soft parts as in poliotis.
Measurements. Wing from 46 to 48 mm.
Distribution. Native Sikkim extending to the hills about Darjeeling.
Nidification unknown.
Habits similar to those of poliotis.
