GERYGONE. 203 



IMr. Bertie L. Jardine writes me as foWows:—" Gcvygone pcrsoimta is by no means uncommon 

 around Cape York, where it frequents the most soHtary and gloomy portions of our dense 

 scrubs. Consequently, with the exception of a passing glimpse now and then, it is seldom seen 

 and its habits are difficult to thoroughly study. In its restlessness and general movements it 

 much resembles Macharorhynchus flavivcuUy. It lives almost exclusively on small insects, many 

 of which are taken on the wing; but as the intertwining of vines and branches often offer serious 

 obstacles to the rapid wing movements required in flight, their food is principally procured from 

 under leaves, bark, etc. 



"The breeding season commences in November, and continues through the four following 

 months. The nest is of an elongated dome shape, having the entrance near the top, which 

 is protected by a projecting hood, and is usually suspended from a pendant supple branch. 

 Strange to say, in almost every instance in which I have found them, they have been built 

 close to a hornets' nest. The nest is built of soft bark-fibre and grasses, and usually contains 

 two eggs." 



Mr. Frank Hislop informs me that there is a species of Gerygone in the scrubs of the 

 Bloomfield Rix'er, that generally builds on the end of a twig or a lawyer-leaf near a wasp's 

 nest, but owing to the proximity of the latter he has never been able to obtain a specimen or 

 satisfactorily d'etermine to which species the nest belongs. The eggs are usually two m number 

 and frequently a bronze-coloured egg of a Cuckoo is found in the nest. Doubtless it is referable 

 to the present species. 



A nest taken by Mr. Jardine at Somerset, Cape York, on the nth January, 1900, is 

 attached to a thin thorny stem of a vine. In form it resembles the nest of Goygon, fusca being 

 a dome-shaped structure with a long bottle-neck like entrance, and having a small quantity of 

 superfluous nesting material below the domed portion of the structure. It is constructed 

 throughout of very fine yellow palm fibre, with an admixture of spiders' webs near the top and 

 on th^ spout-hke entrance. There is a slight lining of soft downy silky-white seeds, but with 

 the exception of some wood-borings that have been collected from the covering of an orifice 

 in a limb, made by the larva of a moth, it is without any outside decoration. It measures 

 externally nine inches in total length, and in width (including the entrance) four inches and a 

 half; across the domed portion of the nest two inches and a half, and along the upper side of 

 the spout-like entrance three inches. Another nest, taken at Cape York, is much shorter, 

 having no tail-like appendage below the nest, and is formed externally of very fine strips of 

 bark, woven together with spiders' webs, ornamented with the white and green egg-bags of 

 spiders, and lined inside with silky-white seeds. Externally it measures six inches in length 

 by three inches in diameter at its widest part. 



The eggs are two in number for a sitting; they are oval m form, the shell being close- 

 grained, smooth, and slightly lustrous. A set of two, taken by Mr. Jardine on the nth 

 January, 1900, are of a faint reddish- white ground colour, which is minutely freckled all over 

 with dull purplish-red; the markings, although small and nearly invisible except on the larger 

 end, are so thickly disposed that the ground colour is almost obscured. Length (A) 0-67 x 0-5 

 inches; (B) o-68 x 0-51 inches. Another set of two, taken at Cape York, are pure white freckled 

 with dull red, which is more thickly disposed towards the larger end, where an ill-defined zone 

 is formed. Length :— { A) 0-69 x 0-48 inches ; (B) o-68 x 0-48 inches. 



