]50 



MCSCICAPID^. 





The stillness of early morning is first broken by the rich clear notes of one of these sombre- 

 hued choristers, when it is gradually responded to and taken up by all the Brown Flycatchers 

 in the bush. This opening chorus to the birth of day is kept up for about a quarter of an hour 

 or twenty minutes, then it suddenly ceases, except perhaps for the notes of a far off solitary bird, 

 which sound like an echo in the distance. On bright and clear days in midwinter, this bird also 

 soars about high in the air, until it is almost out of sight, singing sweetly all the time. That 

 the birds of Australia are without song is as erroneous as is the general belief of those who 

 have never been in the .Australian bush that its flowers are without perfume. 



Its food consists principally of flies, small moths, and butterflies, captured while on the 

 wing, or picked off some tree-trunk while hovering close to it. Small beetles, spiders, and ants, 

 too, are eaten, also the larva; of insects, and 1 have often seen it pick up bread-crumbs. In 

 orchards and vineyards it is a most useful bird, being an indefatigable destroyer of insects, 

 and ridding the trees and vines of many pests which infest them. .Mthough so dull coloured 



in plumage, its lively 

 actions, sweet song, and 



useful habits, will amply 



^^jti"- ■ repay one for the protec- 



Y|L • 'ion afforded to this ever 



\ '^k-,' - -^ trustful little bird, when 



it seeks the haunts of man. 

 The nest is a small 

 saucer-shaped structure, 

 and would be very diffi- 

 cult to discover, if the 

 actions of the female did 

 not usually betray its 

 whereabouts, for if dis- 

 turbed she soon returns 

 to the nest, even while 

 one is underneath the 

 tree. It is formed of 

 fine dried grasses, inter- 

 mingled sometimes with a little horse-hair, and is neatly fitted into the angle of a forked 

 horizontal branch, the rim being raised slightly above the branch, and often ornamented 

 with pieces of bark or bits of lichen, fastened on with cobwebs. Externally it measures 

 two inches, by three-quarters of an inch in depth. Bare dead horizontal branches of the 

 different species of Eucalyptus, Acacia, and Melaleuca, are chiefly selected as nesting-sites, but 

 sometimes low saplings or branches of fallen trees are utilized. In the parks and gardens 

 of Sydney the nest is usually built near the extremity of an outspreading bough of a Moreton 

 Bay Fig. Many thousands of people must have passed under a nest built in a forked 

 horizontal branch of one of the latter trees overhanging a path near the College Street 

 entrance to Hyde Park; yet the birds succeeded in rearing a pair of young ones that more 

 than filled the nest the day prior to leaving it, 24th September, 1901. The site selected 

 generally varies from ten to seventy feet from the ground; but when resorting to fallen 

 trees, nests may be occasionally found very near the ground, or within hand's reach. A 

 nest in the Group collection of the Australian Museum, built in an unusual situation, is in 

 a nearly upright fork of a gum sapling. This nest, which is partially lined with white fowl's 

 feathers, I found at Chatswood on the 22nd .\ugust, 1897. It contained two heavily incubated 

 •eggs. The nest figured was built in a tea-tree, at Canterbury. 



NEST A.M) KGCS OF BROWN FLYC.\TC1IEK. 



