PRIONOLlLIKA. 



413 



j^iPiPEisriDi^?:. 



/'^^^^v.fc^ 



Prionodura newtoniana. 



NEWTON'8 B< iWKR-BIED. 



Vol. L, v. 65. 



Priuiiodin-ii Hfirloniauii, North, AUstr. Pr-oc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, p. ii. (27tli Nov., 1908) ; id., 



Vict. Nat., Vol. XXV., p. IG-i, pi. 7, tigs. 1 and 2 (Feb., 1909). 

 (^T a meeting of the Liiinean Society of New South Wales, held on the 25th November, 

 .^*"\. 1908, I e,\hibited and described the nest and eggs of Newton's Bower-bird, taken in 

 the Evelyn Scrubs, abuut tliirty miles from .Athevton, North Oueensland, and also e.xhibited a 



skin of the female shot close to 

 the nest. The first nest wasfound 

 on the gth November, igo8. 

 It is an open cup-shaped struc- 

 ture formed externally of dead 

 leaves and portions of leaves, 

 including fragments of Stag- 

 horn ferns, a small quantity of 

 dead moss, and is lined inside 

 at the bottom with thin dead 

 twigs. Externally it measures 

 live inches and a half in diameter 

 by two inches and a half in 

 depth, the inner cup measuring 

 four inches and a half in diameter 

 by one inch and a half in depth, 

 and contained two fresh eggs, 

 the female also being secured. 

 The nest was built about the 

 centre of an irregular-shaped 

 perpendicular aperture in a tree 

 trunk, and was three feet from 

 the ground. Another nest, also containing two fresh eggs, was found in a cleft on the side of a 

 rotten tree trunk, and above it, at equal distances in the same cleft, were two old nests of the 

 same species, the highest one being two feet from the ground. A third nest, containmg also 

 two fresh eggs, was built between the buttresses of a tree about three feet from the ground. 

 Another nest, found on the 20th December, 1908, is externally triangular-shaped at the rim, is 

 much deeper in form, and in addition to the leaves, with portions of and skeletons of leaves, is 

 further strengthened on one side by several small sticks, which are amazingly adhered together 

 by a fungoid growth, now dead and dried, the inside of the structure being deep cup-shaped, 

 and lined with thin twigs and fibrous rootlets. It measures externally six inches in diameter, 

 by three inches and a half in depth, the inner cup measuring three inches and a half in diameter 

 by two inches and a quarter in depth. This nest was built about three feet from the ground, 

 in a buttress of a Fig-tree, supported by a number of small sticks placed crosswise from the 

 ground to the base of the nest, and contained a single recently-hatched young bird, which 

 Mr. G. Sharpe took and made into a skin a week later. Most of the nests found were built in Fig- 

 trees, and each contained two eggs, but in some only an incubated egg or young bird. 



104 



NEST AND El.iGS OF NEWTON S 1!0\VF,R-I;1RD. 



