RERGYONE. 193 



commences to sing about 5 a.m. Just prior to taking its departure, it does not sing so 

 frequently, and usually repeats only part of its spring song. 



The food of this species consists entirely of minute insects and their larva, which it 

 obtains among the leaves. While engaged in its search for food it is quite unconcerned at the 

 approach of an intruder, and frequently will utter its pleasing song while perched a few feet 

 abo\'e one's head. 



The nest is oblong-o\al in form, with a narrow entrance near the top, protected with 

 a small hood, the bottom of the nest terminating in a beard or tail several inches in 

 length. Outwardly it is constructed of very fine strips or shreds of stringy bark, firmly 

 interwoven with spiders' webs, and lined inside with feathers, fur, hair, or soft downy seeds. 

 Some nests are built throughout of bark and cobwebs; others are beautifully ornamented on 

 the outside with the pure white egg-bags of spiders, or the pale green web in which they are 

 sometimes enveloped. As a rule, however, dull red is the prevailing colour of their nests. In 

 one now before me several pieces of string and white worsted are worked into the front. A 

 common decoration is the silky covering to holes in trees formed by the wood-boring larvje of 

 insects, and to which closely adhere small particles of wood. On some I have found pieces of 

 kino which were probably attached to the spiders' webs when collected by the birds off the 

 trunks of trees. One taken by me at Ashfield on the loth November, i8go, had two entrances, 

 one above the other; it was built near the top of a Turpentine-tree at a height of forty feet from 

 the ground, and contained three fresh eggs on which the bird was sitting. It is remarkable, 

 too, that nests often built near one another differ so much in the material used in their inner 

 construction. Of two taken in close proximity, one is thickly lined with feathers the other 

 entirely with cow-hair. The beard or tail below the nest varies considerably in length. 

 Generally it is about three or four inches long, but a nest I found had this appendage over 

 six inches and a half in length. The nest figured on Plate A 4, which was taken at Roseville 

 on the 19th October, 1898, measures five inches in length by two inches and a half in breadth, 

 the tail beneath the nest five inches, and across the aperture one inch. It was built in a 

 Sydney Peppermint (Eucalyptus piperita) and contained two fresh eggs. In the neighbourhood 

 of Sydney the nest is usually attached at the top to a tliin leafy branchlet of a gum sapling or 

 Turpentine-tree (Syncarpia laurifoUa). Some are built within hand's reach, but generally they 

 are from ten to twenty feet in height from the ground, and not infrequently they are found at 

 an altitude of fully forty feet. 



The nests of this species are extremely common, and fall an easy prey to bird-nesting 

 boys, for the little builders pour forth their musical notes during the greater part of the time 

 they are engaged in the task of nidification. A nest the writer had under daily observation 

 near his house, was commenced early in the morning of the 28th September, 1898. At that 

 time only a small portion of bark was placed around a thin upright leafy twig of a low sapling, 

 at a height of five feet from the ground. Nesting material, consisting of fine strips and shreds 

 of stringy-bark interwoven with spiders' webs was added for the two following days. It was 

 then a long rounded pendant mass, averaging except at the bottom, two inches in diameter by 

 nine inches in length, and without the least semblance or form of a nest. On the fourth day a 

 neatly rounded hole was made near the top of this collection of nesting material, enabling the 

 birds to get inside. Gradually they worked their way down the centre of the mass to the 

 required depth, at the same time forcing out the sides until it assumed an oblong-oval form, 

 with a few inches of superfluous nesting material remaining below the nest. Fashioning the 

 interior, and lining it with finer strips of bark and at the bottom with feathers occupied another 

 four days. On the 8th October, eleven days after the nest was first commenced, I flushed 

 a bird from it, and found it contained one egg. The next day another egg was laid, and 

 probably a third was deposited on the succeeding day, but on passing the tree that evening I 



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