ACANTIIIZA. 



267 



in trees, and is seldom if ever seen on the ground, except for tire purpose of obtaining material 

 to form its nest. 



The usual note of this species is a short, sharp, and rapidly uttered "tiz, tiz, tiz," and 

 somewhat resembles that of the female of Malurns superbus. 



From South Australia, Dr. A. M. Morgan writes n\e:—''Acanthir:a nana is fairly common 

 about Laura, one hundred and forty miles north of Adelaide, and also at the River Finniss. 

 I ha\e not met with it elsewhere in South Australia. On the 30th October, 1895, I found 

 a nest on the Rocky River near Laura. It was a dome-shaped structure, outwardly composed 

 of sheep's wool, and lined with feathers, and was suspended by the top to the upper twigs of 

 an acacia locally known as the ' Broughton willow.' The nest was about twenty-five feet 

 from the ground, and contained three slightly incubated eggs. The female was shot from 

 the nest." 



The nest is either a rounded-oval or nearly spherical in form, with a narrow entrance near 

 the top, and is formed of thin strips of dried bark, bark fibre, and fine grasses, matted up with 

 spider's webs, and ornamented on the outside with the egg-bags of spiders, or green mosses; 

 the inside being usually lined with fine dried grasses, feathers, or the white silky down from the 

 seed-pods of the introduced cotton plant. An average nest measures three inches and a half in 

 height by two inches and a half in diameter, and across the entrance one inch. They vary 

 much in outward appearance, some being composed chiefly of strips of red stringy bark, others 

 are thickly coated with green mosses, and some are largely decorated with the white egg-bags 

 of spiders, more like the typical nests of Acanthiza lincata. A nest found at Canterbury, near 

 Sydney, on the iSth September, 1898, was formed of exceedingly fine grass-stems matted with 

 cobwebs, a few egg-bags of spiders, and thickly coated with the pale green bearded lichen 

 (Usnea bafbata), the inside being lined with similar dried grasses and white fowls' feathers. 

 The outer portion of the nest was very evenly made, and I was able to peel it off in one piece, 

 like the rind of an orange, leaving the inner wall and lining of the nest perfect. This nest was 

 built in the bushy end of a branch near the top of an acclimatised Pinns iusignis, at a height of 

 twenty feet from the ground, and contained two eggs, also one of the Bronze Cuckoo (Lampro- 

 coccyx plagosus). When frequenting gardens, I have on several occasions known these birds to 

 construct their nests in pines, and they were only found by watching the birds while they were 

 engaged in building them. Usually they are built among thin leafy twigs, sometimes of gum 

 saplings, but preference is shown for the tops of tea-trees or the outside twigs of different 

 species of acacia, more especially when in flower. They are generally placed at a height 

 from ten to thirty feet from the ground, and higher as a rule than the nests of any other species 

 oi Acanthiza inhabiting the neighbourhood of Sydney, or of the allied genus Geobasilcus. The 

 nest is never built near the ground, like that of Acanthiza pusiUa. 



The eggs are three in number for a sitting, oval in form, the shell being close-grained, 

 smooth, and lustreless. They are of a dull white ground colour which is conspicuously freckled 

 and blotched with different shades of purplish-red, intermingled with a few similar underlying 

 markings of dull lilac, in some instances the markings being uniformly distributed over the 

 shell, in others predominating or confined almost entirely to the larger end, where a more or 

 less well defined zone is formed. Typically the eggs of this species may be distinguished from 

 those of any other of the genus by the darker colour and larger size of the markings. A set of 

 three, taken at Canterbury, near Sydney, in September, 1897, measures as follows:— Length 

 (A) 0-65 X 0-43 inches; (B) 0-65 x 0-46 inches; (C) 0-64 x 0-44 inches. Another set taken in 

 the same locality in December, igoi, measures:— Length (A) 0-62 x 0-45 inches; (B) 0-63 x 0-45 

 inches; (C) o'68 x 0-44 inches. 



August and the four following months constitute the usual breeding season of this species. 

 Evidently two broods are reared, for eggs may be usually found early in September, and again 



