88 NESTS AND EGGS OF AVSTRAZIAN BIRDS. 



Grallina's nest. These old homes are also attractive to other birds, such as 

 the White-iiimped Wood Swallow ( Art am us hucupygialix), and Little 

 Cuckoo Shrike (Gratimliis mentaUs), the former invariably, the latter 

 occasionally constructing their own nests within the roomy and secure one 

 of the Magpie Lark. If a clutch of eggs be removed, the Magpie Lark will 

 lay again in the same nest ; but a new nest is usually built cvei-y year, if 

 not for every brood, of which there are two or more a season. 



I recorded, 8th November, 1894, in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society of Victoria, the occuiTence of the egg of the Pallid Cuckoo 

 (C . palUdus) in the nest of the Grallina. The nest was taken at Chelten- 

 ham by my young friend, Mr. John Sommers, and contained five , eggs of 

 the Grallina besides the Cuckoo's egg. For many years Mr. S. W. Jackson 

 could depend on taking sets of pure white eggs, laid by a Magpie La.rk, 

 in the Clarence River district. I examined one of these singular sets 

 in Mr. Jackson's collection. 



During the wet season, 1889, in the neighbourhood of the Lower 

 Murray, where nearly all the adjacent country was under water, some 

 Magpie Larks, so Mr. George H. Morton informs me, elected to nest in 

 certain very odd places. One built its nest on the rail of a swing gate ; 

 another upon the top of a post ; whilst a third bird selected some iron 

 hooks suspended in an outshed. Mr. C. M. Maplcstone, a member of 

 our Field Naturalists' Club, remembers another odd situation for a nest, 

 where the bird reared her young seciu'ely — the top of a telegraph pole on 

 the high road between Camperdown and Lismore, Victoria. 



A friend of mine once observed a reddish-brown tree-snake (Dipsas 

 fu.sca) in the act of taking young from the nest of a Magpie Lark, having 

 had liis attention directed to the spot by the tenified cries of the parent 

 birds. When the snake found it was discovered, by the presence of stout 

 sticks wliizzing past uncomfortably close to its head, the reptile ilattened 

 itself along the limb, as if to avoid observation, or at all events to evade 

 the flying sticks. 



The breeding months are chiefly from September to January. 

 Sometimes in Queensland as early as the beginning of August ; whilst in 

 the North-west, in March (1897), the natives brought several young ones 

 into the camp of the Calvert Expedition near the Fitzroy River. 



Tlie Magpie Lark is indeed one of the most useful of Australian birds. 

 Dr. N. A. Cobb, the Pathologist of the Department of Agriculture of New 

 South Wales, proved that tliis bird destroys numbers of a species of laud 

 molluscs that are intermediat* hosts of fluke. 



65- — CoLLYRiociNCLA HARMONICA, Latham. — (123) 

 GREY SHRIKE THRUSH. 



Figure. — Gould : Birds of Austraha, fol., vol. ii., p 74 



Reference. — Latham, Ind Orn.Supp. xli.; Cat. Birds Brit, Mus., vol. iii., p. 290. 



Previous Descriptions of Eggs. — Gould; Birds of Australia (1S48), also Hand- 

 book, vol. i., p. 221 (1865); North; Austn. Mus, Cat., p, 80, 

 pi. 8. egs, 2—4 (18S9) 



Geoyraphiral Distribution. — Queensland. New South Wales, Victoria, 

 and South Austraha. 



