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MELIPHAGID.B. 



series of these birds in November, 1897, including fledgelings, immature, and fully adult birds of 

 both sexes. In the same month of the following year it was met with again in numbers in 

 the Upper Clarence District. At Wellington and Dubbo in company with Dr. E. P. Ramsay 

 in August, 1887, I obtained several of these birds while feeding on the grassy sward beneath 

 low and wide-spreading Eucalypti. 



In habits it is bold and pugnacious, and like Mdiphaga phvygia and Tyopidorhynchns 

 cornicidatus, it is often engaged in the pursuit of, or quarrelling with other species. Its food 

 consists of the nectar and pollen of flowers, chiefly obtained from the different species of 

 flowering Eucalypti, also insects and wild fruits and berries. It attacks cultivated fruits with 

 avidity, especially peaches, plums and apricots. The great partiality it evinces for the fruit of 

 the banana among others, in the northern coastal districts of New South Wales, has gained 

 for it in many parts the local name of "Banana-bird." 



Mr. Herbert E. Ross writes me as follows: — "Of all native birds the Blue-faced Honey- 

 eater is the most daring when on pillage bent. Once I was lunching with a friend in a wild and 

 unsettled part of the Upper Clarence District, a locality where these birds were probably 

 free from discouraging experiences of unsympathetic orchardists. Attracted by the canned 

 preserves, one of these Honey -eaters fluttered here and there close at hand, and at last settled 

 to taste the sweets of our meal ; my friend objected and drove him off. He returned, and I 

 then offered the visitor moist sugar in a spoon at arm's length, which on small consideration he 

 accepted and again settled on our board. I actually grabbed him, and brought him, complacent 

 to the end, a prisoner to Sydney, liberating him in a friend's aviary, where he dominated the 

 other larger birds with an assurance that was amusing in the extreme." 



'Sir. Edwin Ashby writes me: — "I received a specimen o[ Entomyza cyaiwtis, trom my cousin 

 Mr. George Coleman. This bird was shot by him at Morgan on the Murray River, South 

 Australia, on the 24th March, 1905. He informs me that he first noticed these birds getting 

 honey out of some kerosene tins that had been placed wrong way up on posts to drain. The 

 birds were quite tame and went right up into the tins to procure the honey." 



Usually this species re-lines with strips of bark the deserted tenement of Poniatostonius 

 temporalis, or forms its nest in a depression at the top of the stick and twig built nest of this 

 species. Both in the Dubbo and the Moree District I found these sites resorted to, but at 

 Copmanhurst, Mr. G. Savidge, who has found them in a variety of situations and formed of different 

 materials, showed me one built at the extremity of a branch of a lofty Eucalyptus, cup-shaped in 

 form and made externally of strips of bark, resembling that of Tropidorhynchus coniiculatus, and 

 fully sixty feet from the ground. The nest here figured was also built by the birds themselves, 

 and was taken by Mr. Savidge near his house, in a gum sapling, in August, 1899. It is formed 

 on an oblong platform of sticks and twigs eighteen inches in length, nine inches in width by six 

 inches in depth, and is cup-shaped in form in the centre, made of strips of bark, the inside being 

 lined with finer strips and shreds of bark, dried grass stems and horse-hair, averaging externally 

 six inches in diameter by three inches and three-quarters in depth, and is compactly built, 

 strips of bark being intermingled throughout the centre of the foundation. This nest which 

 contained two fresh eggs, Mr. Savidge forwarded to the Trustees, and is now in the Group 

 Collection of the Australian Museum. 



Another nest received from Mr. Savidge, and taken at the latter end of September 1899, is 

 irregularly formed externally of strips of bark and bark-fibre, with a slight addition of spiders' 

 webs, cocoons, and dried grasses; the inside which is neatly cup-shaped, being lined with plant 

 down and a few pieces of cow-hide with the hair attached. It measures externally five inches 

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

 in diameter by two inches and a half in depth. With it Mr. Savidge sent the following note: — 



