216 MUSCICAPID.E. 



some of them being about half-grown and much darker in colour than the old remaining 

 feathers. I also obtained a young parti-coloured male on the gth November in almost the 

 same stage of plumage as a specimen obtained by Mr. R. Grant, at Buckiinguy, about two 

 hundred and eighty miles away, in July of the same year. The stomachs of all the birds we 

 examined contained minute insects. 



Dr. A. M. Morgan informs me that during a trip made to the Gawler Ranges, South 

 Australia, in August, 1902, by Dr. A. Chenery and himself, this species was not met with 

 further west than forty-five miles from Port Augusta. At \\'artaka West a pair were found 

 roosting in an old nest of Pomatosiomus superciliosus. 



Writmg to me from Point Cloates, North-western Australia, Mr. Tom Carter remarks: — 

 "Maluriis Iciicoptenis is most frequently seen of any of the Maluri here. It was especially 

 numerous in 1898, after a hurricane, when a great growth of 'roley-poley ' bush sprang to 

 a considerable size, and many of its nests were found in it. I have seen full plumaged 

 males in almost every month of the year. They are not so easy to approach as the duller 

 coloured females and immature birds. They sleep in small families in thick bushes, and 

 often keep uttering their pretty warble through the night, especially if any noise is made 

 near them." 



The nest is a dome shaped structure, with an entrance near the top. It is formed 

 externally of soft dried grasses and dead (lowering plant-stalks, slightly matted together with 

 silky-white plant-down, and is usually thickly lined inside with the latter material, at other 

 times with feathers or wool according to the situation in which it is built. Some nests 

 have the tops slightly protected with a hood, but as a rule the entrance is oval and large 

 for the size of the nest, like that of M. lamberti. An average nest measures externally four 

 inches and a half in height by three inches in width, and the entrance one inch and a half 

 in height by one inch in width. It is usually placed in a low bush, within two or three 

 feet of the ground, but I have known them to be taken at a height of five feet. In New 

 South Wales, salt-bushes, cotton-bushes, and "roley-poley" bushes are favourite nesting sites. 



The eggs are usually four in number for a sitting, and vary from oval to rounded and 

 elongate-oval in form, the shell being close-grained, and its surface smooth and almost 

 lustreless. When fresh they are of a fleshy-white ground colour, which changes to pure 

 white when emptied of their contents; the shell is finely spotted or blotched with dull red or 

 reddish-brown, the markings predominating on the larger end, where a more or less well defined 

 zone or cap is frequently formed. Some specimens are minutely hut sparingly dusted or 

 peppered all over with pinkish-red, and occasionally others may be found which are entirely 

 devoid of markings. A set of four, taken in October, 1884, in the Wimmera District, Victoria, 

 measures: — Length (A) o-6 x 0-47 inches; (B) 0-62 x 0-47 inches (C) 0-58 x 0-46 inches; (D) 

 3-57 X 0-46 inches. Another set of four, taken by me on Tyreel Station, near Moree, on the gth 

 November, 1897, measures: — (A) 0-62 x 0-44 inches; (B) 0-64 x 0-45 inches; (C) 0-64 x 075 

 inches; (D) 0-62 x 0-44 inches. 



The Narrow-billed Bronze Cuckoo frequently deposits its egg in the nest of this species. 



Young males resemble the female. Some examples from South .\ustralia have the upper 

 surface strongly washed with rich fawn colour. As a rule their darker blue tail and the 

 white scapulars are the first signs of acquiring the distinguishing plumage of the male, but 

 specimens are also found with only a few of the feathers on the crown of the head tipped 

 with cobalt-blue, and the remainder of their plumage as in the adult female. Excepting the 

 tail feathers, the change in the male from youth to the fully adult livery is mostly if not wholly 

 assumed by a change of colour in the feathers and not by moult. Thus in the semi-adult 

 stage, specimens may be found with the brown and dull white body plumage of the female, and 



