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year. They frequent chiefly open forest and partially cleared lands, and are usually met \vith in 

 pairs. The male, with its strikingly contrasted black and white plumage and rich and melodious 

 sono-, being the first to attract one's attention; the sombrely attired female, harmonising with 

 its surroundings, being more difficult of detection. 



The voluble notes of the male are usually uttered while flying from tree to tree, and 

 somewhat resemble those of the Brown Fly-catcher I Micnrca fascinans) but are louder and 

 deeper. The remarkably small nest of this bird, too, would often escape observation, were not 

 the attractive song of the male frefjuently poured forth while perched on a branch close to it. 



The food consists entirely of insects and their larvje, obtained chiefly among the leaves of 

 trees, and sometimes on the ground. Although frequenting orchards, I have never known it 

 to attack the fruit like the larger members of the family Campophagid.?:. 



During a \isit paid to Moree in November, 1897, by Mr. J. A. Thorpe and myself, we found 

 this species the commonest bird in the neighbourhood, being even more plentiful than the 

 White-eyebrowed Wood Swallow (Artamus supnriliosus). It was breeding freely, and there 

 was a nest in a Bastard ^lyall (Acacia ciinninghami ) w'lth'm a few yards of my window. The 

 female used to sit in the early morning, being relieved by the male throughout the greater part 

 of the day, and resuming the duties of incubation again in the evening and through the 

 night. In the same tree was a nest of the Black and White Fantail (Sauloprocta melaleiica). 

 Another instance of the female relieving the male at night, during the task of incubation, I 

 observed at Roseville. A nest which I found in course of construction in a low forked branch 

 of a Rough-barked .Apple-tree (Angophom intermedia), on the 28th October, 1901, by seeing the 

 female fly to it, although I only saw the male actually building it, was finished on the 4th 

 November. After the eggs were deposited, whenever I passed it in the daytime I found the 

 male sitting, but at dusk his place was taken by the female. Evidently the male was not near 

 at hand, or disregarded her cries of alarm, when I drew the branch down and frightened her off 

 the nest. 



The nest, a small open shallow structure, is built at the junction of a two or more pronged 

 horizontal branch, occasionally in a perfectly upright fork, but more often in a slightly leaning 

 pronged branch, and generally towards the extremity of a limb. It is formed of very fine 

 fibrous roots or dried grasses, the rim and the fork in which it is built being thickly coated 

 with spider's web. The nests are variable in size, according to the position in which they are 

 built ; those on horizontal forks being as a rule larger than those placed in upright branches. 

 At Chatswood, near Sydney, on the 28th November, 1898, I saw the male of a pair of these 

 birds, who had been robbed of their eggs, commencing to build again in a thin forked 

 horizontal branch of a sapling about fifteen feet from the ground. This nest I had under daily 

 and almost constant observation, and the male alone constructed it so far as I could ascertain, 

 in fact I never saw the female of this pair of birds at any time. On the 3rd December I saw 

 the male sitting on the nest, and also three days later when it contained two perfectly fresh 

 eggs, .\lthough this nest was quickly built, it is more compactly constructed and far neater 

 in appearance than the first nest, built in an upright fork near the top of a Syncarpia. 

 It is formed at the junction of a very thin three-pronged leafy branch, and is outwardly 

 composed of fine pliant plant stems, lined inside with fine dried grasses; the outer portion of 

 it, the fork on which it is placed, and the rim being coated with spider's web and ornamented 

 with a few small leaves of a climbing plant. Externally it measures two inches and a half in 

 diameter by one inch and a quarter in depth; the inner saucer-shaped cavity measuring two 

 inches in diameter by three-quarters of an inch in depth. The site of the nest varies very much; 

 inland it is frequently built in a hop bush or emu-bush, as low as four feet from the ground. 

 Near the coast it is more often built in a gum, apple, oak, or turpentine-tree at a height from 

 fifteen to thirty feet, but not infrequently at an altitude of sixty or seventy feet. The eggs are 



