GERYGONK. 



197 



"Sarsaparilla" (Sniilax australis). I have also found them attached to dead gum sapHngs, 

 and one overhanging a creek on a dead bare twig without any shelter whatever. Usually they 

 are built from ten to fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, but I have seen them as low as 

 three feet and as high as forty feet. Trees growing on the sides of or near creeks are favourite 

 situations, but they may be also found in trees on the roadside or in the high brush far removed 

 from water. 



The eggs are two or three in number for a sitting, oval or elongate-oval in form, the shell 

 being close-grained, smooth, and almost lustreless. They are of a white or reddish-white 

 ground colour, which is finely freckled, spotted, and blotched with different shades varying 



from dull to bright red, and faint 

 purplish-red; the markings, whether 

 large or small, are all irregularly 

 shaped, and predominate as a rule 

 on the thicker end, where a more or 

 less well defined zone is frequently 

 formed. Some specimens have but 

 a few isolated spots and dots dis- 

 tributed over the shell, and in a 

 set I took at Ourimbah, one of 

 the eggs was pure white, while the 

 remainder were thickly freckled, 

 spotted, and blotched with bright 

 red. A set of three, taken on the 

 24th November, 1901, measures as 

 follows : — Length (A) 0-67 x 0-47 

 inches; (B) 0-65 x 0-46 inches; (C) 

 o'66 X 0-47 inches. A set of two taken 

 on the following day from the nest 

 figured, measures: — (A) o*6 x 0-47 

 inches; (B) 0'62 x 0-47 inches. 



So far as I have observed, the female 

 alone undertakes the task of nest- 

 building, the male being usually in a 

 tree near by, and enlivening her with 

 his song. I have had many oppor- 

 tunities of watching the nests of this 

 species being built, from the com- 

 mencement to the finish. They are 

 formed precisely in a similar manner 

 to those of Gcrygone albigularis, a 

 pendant mass of nesting material first 

 being collected, an entrance afterwards 

 being made into it and the domed portion, formed by forcing out the sides and linmg it with 

 bark fibre and plant down. 



The nest figured, which gives a side view of the structure, was built within three feet of 

 "the ground, in a mass of vines overgrowing a small bush at Ourimbah. It was commenced on 

 the morning of the loth November, 1901 ; at that time only a small quantity of moss and a 

 little cobweb was built around a horizontal vine stem. Two days later, it was a long 

 rounded mass of similar nesting material, measuring ten inches in length. The following day 



NEST OF BROWN BUSII-WARI! LER. 



Ud 



