ACANTIIIZA. 



2G'J 



matted up together, but not as 

 a rule so neatly woven as the 



obtained in October, 1903, about twenty miles west of Port \'ictor; and an adult male obtained 

 by Dr. A. M. ^Morgan in October, 1903, at Dalveen, on the highlands of the Darling Downs, 

 Southern Queensland. It is a resident species in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and is very 

 common between Manly and Newport, also on the highlands of the Milson's Point railway-line. 

 The tails of adult specimens I collected on the coast at Xarrabeen are shorter and more strongly 

 washed with ruddy-olive than examples procured by Mr. J. A. Thorpe at Tarana, on the Blue 

 Mountains; the former averaging i 63 inches in length, and the latter 1-9 inches. 



It utters a clear warble, somewhat resembling that of Scriconiis frontalis, but I am unable 

 to convey any idea of its sound by words. Like the other members of the genus, it is entirely 

 insectivorous. 



The nests are rounded-oval or dome-shaped structures, with an entrance near the top, 

 and are rather roughly formed externally of shreds and strips of bark, coarse grasses, and a 



small quantity of spider's webs all 



nests of Acanthtza Inicata, the in- 

 side being lined with feathers, hair, 

 fur, or the white silky down from 

 the pods of the introduced cotton- 

 plant. An average nest measures 

 externally four inches and a half 

 in length, by three inches and a 

 <]uarter in breadth, and across 

 the entrance, which is slightly 

 protected with a hood, one inch. 

 Generally they are built near 

 the ground, and are usually 

 attached to the under side of the 

 common bracken fern, the stem 

 of a low shrub, or in thick bushes 

 particularly those covered with 

 debris, or suspended from the 

 scrubby twigs of a tree. At 

 Narrabeen, where I saw these 

 birds lining their nests as early 

 as the 2oth June, all of them were 

 built in bracken ferns. In com- 

 pany with Mr. C. G. Johnston, a 

 nest was found at Roseville on the 

 30th August, 1S9S, in a single-stemmed geebung, only nine inches in height, the bottom of the 

 structure being two inches off the ground. It contained two half-fledged young, and while we 

 were resting on the ground close to the nest, one of the parents came within two feet of us. 

 Although alarmed at our intrusion, the common devices to draw one away from the nest were 

 not resorted to in this instance. A remarkable nest was found by the late Mr. Neville Cayley in 

 the scrub on the beach at Woonona, in the Illawarra District, which he pointed out to me on the 

 5th November, iSg6. The nest, a small dome-shaped structure, with a narrow rounded entrance, 

 was suspended from the top to a thin branch of a tea-tree, at a height of four feet from the 

 ground. Externally it was entirely covered with very thin twigs of a Lcptospamum, which 

 hung perpendicularly around the structure, resembling very much a huge cocoon of the larvas 



Aa 13 



NEST OF SCRUB THORN-BILL. 



