STKUTIUDEA. 



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thev are known nearly all o\er Xew South ^^■ales, and the south-eastern portions of 

 Queensland, as the "TweKe Apostles," a name also shared in some parts with that of "Happy 

 Family" for Pomatostomus temporalis. Between the Namoi and the Gwydir Rivers, I found these 

 birds particularly shy and wary, but in the Western District of New South Wales, and in 

 Southern Queensland 1 ha\e known them to become extremely tame and familiar, readily 



entering on to verandahs of 

 outlying' stations in search 

 of food and water, and feast- 

 m\s, upon bread and cake 

 thrown to them. While feed- 

 ing on the ground they are 

 very active, hopping here and 

 there, and keeping up an u. 

 cessant chattering note,which 

 although hard to describe, if 

 once heard can easily be again 

 recognised. I once heard it 

 in Hyde Park, Sydney, on 

 the 1 2th June, 1895, and 

 saw what was evidently an 

 escaped bird, for later on I 

 observed two of its wretched 

 compatriots in a small wire 

 APOSTLE BIRD. Cage for sale in George-street. 



Stomachs of these birds I haxe examined, contained insects of various kinds. 



The nest is a round, bowl-shaped structure, being slightly narrower at the rim, and is 

 formed of pellets of mud nuxed with bits of grass, and is lined inside with dried grasses; some 

 nests have a few feathers worked into the lining. Like Corcorax mdanoramphus, m and localities 

 advantage is taken to obtain the mud for nest-building after a passing thunderstorm, and ot 

 recent years from the edges of the sheets of water formed by artesian boring. Since the intro- 

 duction of artesian boring in the States, it has had a direct influence on the breeding of many 

 species. Birds frequenting arid situations, and forming their nests of mud, now resort to the 

 ed-es of these miniature lakes to obtain the necessary building material. Among the stunted 

 and saline growth too, sprung up around the shores of these artificially-formed sheets of water, 

 many of the smaller Waders now breed regularly, where formerly they bred only m wet seasons 

 The Anacora bore, situated fifty miles east of Charlotte Waters, in one of the driest portions of 

 the lower Northern Territory, where previously there was no water at all, has formed a lake 

 half-a-mile long and quarter of a mile broad. 



Before the introduction of artesian boring in New South Wales, at Coombie, in the 

 Western District, the late Mr. K. H. Bennett records finding a female sitting on her nest when 

 to his certain knowledge there had been no rain for the previous five months, and the nearest 

 water was twenty miles away, showing that this species occasionally resorts to a nest ot the 

 previous season. Mr. E. L. Ramsay informs me that in August and September, 1869 at 

 Wattagoona Station, near Louth, he found several nests, containing eggs, with one inch of the 

 upper part and rim of the nest formed of emu- and cow-dung. 



An average nest measures externally five inches and a half in diameter, by three inches 

 and a quarter in depth, the inner cup measuring four inches and a half in diameter by two 

 inches and a quarter in depth. It is usually built on a thin horizontal branch of a Euca yptus 

 or Casuanna, a favourite tree being the BuU-Qak or "Belar" (Casuarina glauca), at a height 



