13S 



MELIPHAGID.E. 



in the mallee country and is never found on the plains. It is much more plentiful than Ptilotis 

 leucotis. Only on one occasion have I found its nest which was in the month of December. It 

 was of similar construction and materials, but differently placed from that oi P. pcnicillata, being 

 suspended from two parallel horizontal twigs about two inches apart, and contained two eggs of 

 a pinkish-white ground colour, zoned at the thicker end with spots of a darker hue." 



The wing-measurement of adult males varies from 2-8 to 3-15 inches. The feathers on the 

 basal portion of the forehead of some adult specimens from Western Australia, South Australia, 

 and New South Wales, are light grey. 



Mr. Edwin Ashby kindly sent me specimens for examination together with the following 

 notes: — "On the i6th May, 1900, at Nackara, twenty miles east of Petersburg, South Australia, 

 1 found Ptilotis plumiila in great numbers. The gums in flower were literally swarming with 

 them, and had I ammunition enough I could have shot hundreds. Some of the birds were young 

 and had evidently only left the nest a few weeks. The specimen from Callion, Western Australia, 

 I procured in August 1901. This was the only bird I saw of this species, and it was obtained 

 on the same day and the same place as its near relative Ptilotis ontata." 



A nest received from Dr. 

 A. Chenery is a deep cup-shaped 

 structure, being slightly con- 

 tracted at the rim which is firmly 

 worked over two thin horizontal 

 leafy-twigsofa salt-bush, another 

 thin twig running at right angles 

 being securely fastened to the 

 other side of the structure. It 

 is formed throughout of bark 

 fibre, fine dried grasses, plant 

 down, cobwebs and egg-bags of 

 spiders, neatly woven together 

 with a slight lining of fine dried 

 grasses and at the bottom with 

 a small quantity of fur. Extern- 

 ally it measures three inches in 

 diameter, and at the rim where 

 it is contracted, two inches and a 

 half; depth two inches and a 

 quarter, the inner cup averaging 

 two inches in diameter by two inches in depth. 



With an adult male obtained by Dr. A. Chenery, on the 20th July, 1902, I received the 

 following note: — " Ptilotis pliimtila occurs in the Flinders Range, near Port Augusta, South 

 Australia. It is also found in the gums on the creeks running down from the gullies, but 

 does not come out on to the plains for any distance. Up the Gawler Range track Dr. Morgan 

 and myself saw them in the mallee at the foot of the hills." Writing later relative to a nest 

 and set of two eggs presented to the Trustees of the Australian Museum, Dr. Chenery remarks: — 

 "My experience of the only three nests o! Ptilotis plumida I have found in the Flinders Range 

 is that this species never comes out of the mountain creeks and seems to prefer to breed on the 

 sides of the hills in rather isolated patches, or in the scrub far up from the foothills. The nest 

 I send was found in September 1904, and was built in a salt-bush two feet and a half from the 

 ground, and contained three eggs in so advanced a stage of incubation, that I could not blow 

 them. Another found on the side of a hill in Flinders Range, in a small shrub in June 1903, 



NEST OF THE PLUMED HONEY-EATER. 



