90 



MKLIPHAGID.E. 



Mr. C. G. Gibson has kindly sent me the following notes: — "At Lake Austin on the 

 Murchison Goldfields, Western Australia, I found several nests oiCerthioiiy.x hucomclas, in August 

 and September 1903. On the 2nd September, one built in a low bush contained two fresh eggs; 

 of two nests I found on the 5th September, one contained three, the other four fresh eggs. In 

 the Erliston District in 1905, these birds made their appearance about the middle of July, and 

 began nest building almost at once. On the 14th August, I found a nest in a mulga with three 

 eggs much incubated, and another built on the top of thick creepers on a mulga five freet from 

 the ground, from which I took three eggs four days later. On the 17th August I found a nest 

 three feet up in a sandal-wood with two fresh eggs, and another on the following day in the thin 

 twigs at the end of a branch of spiny mulga, containing two fresh eggs. Both sexes assist in 

 constructing the nest, and the male appears to take as much part in the incubation of the eggs 

 as the female. Frequently I have flushed the cock bird from the nest, even while sitting on 

 fresh eggs." 



Three nests of 

 this species taken by 

 Mr. C. G. Gibson, 

 in August 1905 at 

 Laverton, Western 

 Australia, are open 

 deep saucer-shaped 

 structures irregularly 

 formed externally of 

 loni; thin twigs, dead 

 L;rey grasses and 

 small dried flowering 

 plant stalks. They 

 vary in size, the one 

 here figured being the 

 largest, owing to the 

 greater number of 

 twigs used in its outer 



construction, the lining too is somewhat different, consisting of pieces of salt-bush stalks, and 

 fine brown cane-like grass. Excluding straggling twigs it averages externally five inches in 

 diameter by two inches in depth, and the saucer-like depression in the centre three inches in 

 diameter by one inch in depth. The smallest nest measures externally only three inches and a 

 (]uarter in diameter. The nests are placed at the junction of several thin horizontal leafy stems 

 of a bush or tree, one now before me is placed on and between a four pronged stem of a lono- 

 narrow-leaved shrub, one on either side and two beneath the structure, and is also partially 

 supported, and in a measure concealed by its long narrow leaves somewhat resembling the twic^s 

 of which the outer portion of the nest is formed. 



From the preceding notes it will be found that June and the five following months constitute 

 the usual breeding season of this species, nests with eggs being more frequently found in August 

 and September. In Central Australia Mr. C. E. Cowle has taken fresh eggs in March, the 

 breeding season of many species there, as in Northern Australia, usually following after heavy 

 rains in the early part of the year. 



Dr. E. P. Ramsay inadvertently described the eggs of another bird as those of Certhionyx 

 variegatus.'-' The late Mr. K. II. Bennett informed me shortly before his decease that the former 

 eggs belonged to an undescribed species of Honey-eater resembling Cci'thionyx variegatus, which 



' Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., Vol. VII., p. 414 (1883). 



NESTS AND EGGS OP THE PIED HONEY-EATER. 



