Ul 



The nest is a cup-shaped structure, outwardly formed of strips of bark, spiders' webs and 

 cocoons matted up together, the inside being lined with finer strips of bark, a few thin dried grass 

 stalks, feathers, downy seeds, or a small quantity of horse or cow-hair. Fragments of newspapers 

 and pieces of string and rags are often used in its outer construction, and small flowers are some- 

 times used as a resting place for the eggs; the walls of some nests too are much thicker than 

 others. Usually it is built at the junction of a thin forked horizontal branch, or among vines, 

 to which the rim is securely fastened, and within a few feet of the ground. Gum saplings and 

 low Turpentine trees or a tangled mass of vines overrunning any low bush or tree are favourite 

 nesting sites. .At .Xshfield and Canterbury I ha\e frequently found nests in dwarf tea-trees, 



and sometimes in the thin 

 branchlets of the Blackthorn 

 (Bursaria spinosa), and in one 

 of the Epacrids (Astroloma 

 hiimifusa). When built in the 

 latter shrub, the nests are often 

 lined at the bottom with its small 

 white flowers. I have also found 

 them in the dead leafy twigs of 

 partially fallen saplings. One I 

 found at Canterbury, on the 31st 

 October, 1S93, on which the 

 female was sitting on two fresh 

 eggs, appeared to be attached to 

 a single bare upright dead stick. 

 < )n making a closer e.xamination 

 a short thin dead horizontal fork 

 was found just sufficiently large 

 enough to attach the rim of the 

 nest. This structure was about 

 three feet from the ground and 

 close to a frequented bush path 

 and was entirely devoid of con- 

 cealment of any kind, except the 

 protective colouring of the outer 

 materials of which it was formed 

 assimilating to that of the bare 

 dead stick. Two more nests 

 found the same day, each con- 

 tained two fresh eggs, one of 



NEST AND F.GfiS OF THE YELLOW-TUFTED HOXEV-E.^TER. tU„ ^ K, U ' „ ^T 1 ■ -f 



them bunt m a Magnolia fusca m 

 a garden at Ashfield, also contained an e^g of the Pallid Cuckoo. 



I found the nest and eggs figured, at Roseville on the 25th August, 1905. The nest was 

 unusually high, being built twelve feet from the ground near the top of a gum sapling, overrun 

 with the white tiowering vine Teioma austvalis. .\nother found on the same day about fifty yards 

 away, was placed in a similar position. These nests varied in size, one measuring three inches 

 and a half in diameter by three inches in depth, and internally two inches^and a half in diameter 

 by two inches in depth. The other measured three inches in external diameter by four inches 

 in depth, the inner cup measuring two inches and a quarter in diameter by two inches in depth. 



The eggs usually two, sometimes three in number for a sitting, are oval or elongate-oval in 

 form, the shell being close-grained, smooth, and almost lustreless, and vary considerably in size, 



