428 



APPENDIX. 



The abnormally lon^' bill and comparatively long win^jof this species induced me to impress 

 on collectors at all times llie desirability of trying to discover the nest and ej^j^s. In 1905, after 

 a lapse of sixteen years, the Trustees of the Australian Museum received two nests and sets of 

 eggs, taken by Mr. H. Elgner ; also for identification a skin of one of the parents captured on 

 the nest. As I anticipated, the eggs were as widely dilletent as the bird is from the typical 

 form of the genus 5(/7a'rH/.'c. In the iijuj March number of the "Agriculture Gazette of New 

 South Wales," I therefore instituted the genus Orcoscopns for the reception of this species, giving 

 comparative figures of natural size of the types of the genera Oimscopiis and Sei'icoi'uis, as well as 

 a figure of the nest of the former, also a description of it and its eggs. 



From notes sent by Mr. Klgner, I have extracted the fulkjwing : — "The first nest of 5V;7V()r»/s 

 •^tittnralis I obtained was in November, 1903. In the following month 1 found another, built in 

 the side of a gully near the Upper Russell River, with an egg in it, and the following day I 

 flushed the bird from the nest, which contained two eggs. On the loth August, 1904, when on 



Black Mountain, I found another nest con- 

 taining two fresli eggs, in a similar position 

 to the previous ones, being partially built 

 in a hole in an almost perpendicular bank 

 on the side of a gully, o\er-grown with small 

 ferns and mosses, rendering the nest almost 

 invisible. In the early part of October I 

 found two more nests, with two eggs in each, 

 which had been abandoned by the birds. A 

 few days later I was on the Macalister Range, 

 when, coming down a gully, I saw a little 

 liird with some moss in its bill run on to a 

 piece of dead wood. Loolcing with my held 

 glass I saw it was Siricoi'uis gutturnlis. Mark- 

 ing the spot, I returned on the 21st October, 

 1904, and found the bird sitting on two fresh 

 eggs. The eggs of this nest were speckled 

 with red on the thicker end." 



Since that time its nests and eggs have 

 been much more common, among others 

 numerous nests being taken by Mr. G. Sharp 

 between the liellenden Ker Range and 

 Herberton, and by Mr. |. Sharp in the 

 vicinity of Atherton. 



The nest is a dome-shaped structure, with 

 a comparatively large oval entrance on the side, and is composed almost entirely of fresh green 

 mosses, with a slight admixture of line black fern stems and a few skeletons of leaves, there 

 being no other lining inside other than the green moss, except here and there a small tuft of 

 opossum fur. Of the two nests forwarded, one has the appearance at the back of having been 

 attached or partially built in a hole, the other, wliich is figured above, having the base only 

 resting on the ground. They are both of the same average dimensions, measuring se\en inches 

 in height by five inches in diameter, and the entrance two inches and a half in width by one inch 

 and a half in height. 



The eggs are two in number for a sitting, oval in form, as a rule pure white, the shell being 

 close-grained, smooth and lustrous in some, while others are devoid of any gloss. A set of two 

 taken by Mr. H. Elgner, at Black Mountain, on the loth August, 1904, are pure white, and 



NKST OK FERN WHEN. 



