APHELOCEPIIA/.A. "'■'•' 



lar-^e pump, which had to be taken to pieces to remove the obstruction, when the nest was 

 found to contam four fresh eggs. 'On another stati(M, in the south-western district of New 

 South Wales, the late Mr. K. H. Bennett informed me that in November, 18^5, he saw a nest 

 built in the pocket of an overcoat that had been left for some time hanging on a nail under the 

 verandah of the homestead. The owner of the coat, observing the birds going in and coming 

 out of the pocket, allowed it to remain there, and at the time of Mr. Bennett's v,s,t he saw one 

 of the old birds go in several times with food, although he was only standing a few feet away 

 from the coat. 



During a trip made by Dr. A. M. Morgan and Dr. A. Chenery to Mount Gunson, situated 

 to the north-west of Port Augusta, South Australia, in July and August, 1900, they met with th,s 

 species, and Dr. Morgan writes me as follows:-" AVr»/>/»7(r Icmopsis is the commonest bird m the 

 district', and found wherever there is any scrub, also about the houses of stations. Nests were 

 plentifiil built in all manner of situations, but always in a hollow or hole of some kind. A 

 favourite site was a hole in the soft decaying gypsum cliffs. On the 3rd August, we found three 

 nests in this position, one contained fresh eggs, another incubated eggs, and the third young birds. 

 In October, 1891, I found a pair of these birds building in a railway truck lying at a siding at 

 the Finnis Railway Station. They had laid two eggs when the truck was removed. At Mount 

 Gunson, in July, 1901, a pair built a nest in an old packing case at the back of the store; they 

 were still building at the time of my departure. A common nesting-place in the Mount 

 Gunson District was the breeding tunnel of Chcramccca laicostcnww. They did not go to the 

 end of the tunnel, but made a chanibrr for themselves just inside the opening." 



From the l^roken Hill District, in South-western New South Wales, Dr. W. Macgillivray 

 writes me:-^\Xe,'ophila Icucopsts is common along all the creeks and amongst scattered clumps 

 of timber. It builds in a hollow of tree, or a clump of mistletoe; a favourite nesting-site being 

 the under surface or side of a Whistling Eagle, Wedge-tailed Eagle, or Crow's nest." 



Mr. Joseph Gabriel informs me that in September, 1896, at Werribee, Victoria, he found 

 the nests of this species built m the interstices of stone walls used to subdivide the paddocks 

 in that neighbourhood. 



The eggs are usually three or four, sometimes five in number for a sitting, oval or thick 

 oval in form" the shell being close-grained and smooth, some specimens being slightly glossy, 

 others lustreless. They vary in ground colour from pure white to dull white and pale buff, 

 which is usually more or less obscured by freckles, spots, and small irregular-shaped blotches 

 of either light brown, reddish-brown, or chocolate-brown, intermingled with a few similar 

 underlying markings of dull bluish or violet-grey. In some specimens the markings are 

 indistinct, in others well defined and predominating at the thicker end, where they are 

 confluent and assume the form of a zone. Of rarer varieties now before me, one set of an 

 almost pure white ground colour, has a broad band of rich chocolate-brown on the thicker end, 

 and a few fine freckles of the same colour scattered over the shell. Another set, with a similar 

 ground colour, has an irregular-shapsd zone formed of small confluent purplish-brown markings 

 around the thicker end, the remainder of the shell being, with the exception of one or two fine 

 dark brown hair-lines, entirely devoid of markings. A set of four measures as follows :- 

 Length (A) 077 x 0-58 inches; (B) o-yyxo-fi inches; (C) 076 x 0-58 inches; (D) 077x0-59 

 inches. A set of three measures:— (A) 072 x 0-55 inches; (B) 07 x 0-54 inches; (C) 07 x 0-55 

 inches. An unusually small set of two measures alike o-66 x 0-54 inches. 



In South Australia, Dr. Morgan found these birds breeding in July and August. In 

 Central Australia, Mr. C. E. Cowle obtained nests with eggs and young in April, also in 

 December and January. Nests with fresh eggs were found by the Calvert Exploring Expedi- 

 tion in Western Australia in August. About Wellington and Dubbo, in New South Whales 

 the breeding season lasts from August until the end of November; while in the Broken Hill 



Aj 19 



