142 MUSCICAPID.E. 



The nest is a round cup-shaped structure, formed of strips of bark held together with 

 a thin net-work of spiders" webs, and ornamented on the outside with small scales of bark or a 

 few bits of lichen, the mside being thickly and neatly lined with fibrous roots. Some nests are 

 more highly decorated than others; one sent me for examination by the late Mr. W. S. Day, 

 with the birds shot from it, and the eggs, was thickly coated on the outside with lichens, only 

 revealing here and there the bark of which it was chiefly constructed. An average nest 

 measures externally three inches and a (juarter in diameter by two inches and a quarter 

 in depth, the inner cup measuring two inches and a half in diameter by one inch and a half in 

 depth. They are usually built in trees or in vines overhanging water. When at the Herbert 

 River, North-eastern Queensland, Mr. J. A. Boyd kindly forwarded the nests and eggs of this 

 species. A novelty, taken by Mr. P. Cochrane, at Ripple Creek Sugar Plantation, consisted 

 of three nests, one being placed inside the other, each evidently built by the same pair of birds. 

 Being constructed inside one another, only about half of the last nest built is visible externally, 

 which measures barely one inch and a half in height, the three structures altogether measuring 

 three inches and a half in height. Although a thin network of spiders' webs has been worked 

 over the exterior of all the nests, each shows separate and distinct. These nests were found 

 on the 17th October, 1S93. when the female was sitting on two fresh eggs. Mr. Cochrane 

 sent me a well executed sketch, showing the position and surroundings of four nests he had 

 found of this species. He informs me all were built over the water in gloomy situations where 

 the thick foliage above shut out all sunlight, and they \aried in height from five to twenty 

 feet. One nest was constructed at the junction of a three-pronged and partially upright thin 

 branch ; another was built in a fork at the end of a long, bare, dead branch projecting from 

 the bank of a creek. The third nest found was suspended over the water at the junction of 

 a long forked pendant rope-like vine; and the last one taken, built on top of two old nests, 

 was placed in the angle of a bent green leafy branch, some distance above the water. There 

 was some danger in procuring this nest and eggs as it was immediately above the well-known 

 lurking place of a large crocodile that had haunted the locality for some time. Mr. Boyd 

 found a nest of this species in January, 1888, built on the dead branch of a tea-tree that 

 had fallen into a waterhole: also another at the N'alley of Lagoons, on the Herbert River, on 

 the nth December, 1892. 



The eggs are usually two, sometimes three in number for a sitting, and vary in form from 

 oval to elongate-oval, some specimens being rather pointed at the smaller end; the shell is 

 close-grained and its surface smooth and almost lustreless. They are of a faint bluish-white 

 ground colour, minutely freckled, dotted, and spot-ted with dull slaty-black, slaty-brown, or 

 olive-brown, intermingled with similar faint underlying markings of slaty or lilac -grey pre- 

 dominating as usual on the larger end, where in some specimens a more or less well defined 

 zone is formed. .'\ set of two eggs in the collection of Mr. Charles French, Junr., taken near 

 the Daly River in the Northern Territory of South Australia, on the i8th January, 1902, are 

 of a pale bluish-white, one having a zone on the larger end, the other a broad band around the 

 centre formed of spots and large blotches of wood-brown, intermingled with numerous freckles 

 of dull inky-grey. Length:— (A) o-8i x 0-62 inches; (B) o-8 x o-6i inches. A set of three eggs 

 in the Australian Museum collection, taken in the same locality on the 15th February, 1902, 

 measures:— Length (A) 078 X 0-59 inches; (B) 076 x 0-58 inches; (C) 077 x 0-58 inches. A 

 set of two, taken on the 17th October, 1893, at Ripple Creek, Herbert River, Oueensland, 

 measure as follows:— Length (A) o-Sgxo-ei inches; (B) 0-9 x 0-62 inches. Another set of 

 two, taken in the same locality measures:— (A) 0-82 x 0-57 inches; (B) 0-83 x 0-58 inches. 



Young males are similar in plumage to the female, but are duller in colour. Young males 

 in change of plumage have some of the feathers on the mantle, and the upper wing-coverts and 

 breast glossy greenish black, and a few of the quills and tail feathers black, margined externally 



