ZOSTEROPS. 211 



it moves about in flocks from about ten to fifty or a hundred or more in number, usually 

 resorting to sapling scrubs, undergrowth, shrubberies, or gardens. At this time of the year it 

 generally utters a peevish kind of call-note, which is also often emitted during flight. In spring 

 the notes are low, clear, decidedly musical, and long sustained. 



The normal food of this species consists of insects and small wild fruits and berries. It is 

 very fond of the introduced Ink-weed or Dye-berry (Phytolacca octandra) and may sometimes be 

 seen pecking at the berries of the Pepper-tree (Schinus mollc). It is a great pest in orchards 

 and vineyards, eating all kinds of soft fruits, such as cherries, plums, mulberries, peaches, 

 apricots, figs, etc. Opinion is divided whether the amount of injurious insects consumed does 

 not compensate for the harm it does to the fruit crops. There is no question about the vast 

 amount of good it does in ridding fruit trees, roses, fuchsias, and other plants of aphides, as I 

 have frequently seen it do, more especially in July and August. This, however, could be done 

 as effectually by means of a wash or spray at a fraction of the value of the fruit it destroys in 

 the season. Viewed from different standpoints, a florist would probably regard it as a 

 very useful little bird, but an orchardist or vigneron just the reverse, for the Silver-eye demands 

 a very heavy tax from both of tliem for any benefits it may have conferred. Comparati\e 

 with its size it is one of the worst bird pests, vignerons in particular, have to contend with. It 

 is the quiet and unobtrusive manner in which it goes to work that renders precautionary measures 

 other than enclosing every vine or tree with small meshed netting absolutely useless; its colour 

 also assimilating so closely to its surroundings, especially when feeding among the light varieties 

 of grapes as to render detection almost impossible. The Silver-eye is an early riser commencing 

 its depredations at the first blush of morn and continuing them with unabated vigour throughout 

 the greater part of the day, and is undeterred with one watching only a few feet away. It is not 

 so much the quantity of grapes eaten, as it is the number of bunches with a grape here and 

 there pierced by the bill of the Silver-eye and destroyed, and which have to be carefully gone 

 over and cut out, especially in the more choice kinds grown for the table. 



The nest is a neat round cup-shaped structure, externally formed of fine dried grasses and 

 bark, held together with a thin covering of spiders' web, and lined inside with fine dried grasses 

 or fibrous rootlets, and horsehair. Some nests are largely composed of Casuariiia leaves, others 

 are thinly coated with fine green mosses, or with spider's web and egg-bags. An average nest 

 measures externally three inches in diameter by one inch and three-quarters in depth, the inner 

 cup measuring two inches in diameter by one inch and a half in depth. It is attached at the rim 

 to a thin forked horizontal twig of any suitable tree, usually a Melaleuca, Leptospermum or Syncaypia, 

 in the neighbourhood of Sydney, and occasionally a gum sapling. About orchards and gardens 

 they are often built in fruit trees and shrubs. The nests are generally placed within hand reach, 

 but the height varies from three to twelve or fourteen feet from the ground. 



The eggs are usually three, sometimes four in number for a sitting, oval in form, the shell 

 being close-grained, smooth, and slightly lustrous. They are of a uniform pale blue, and are richer 

 in colour when fresh and directly they have been emptied of their contents. This intensity of 

 colour is lost, however, as soon as the shells are perfectly dry. A set of four in the Australian 

 Museum collection, taken at Randwick, New South Wales, on the 29th September, 1892, 

 measures: — Length (A) 0-67 x 0-5 inches; (B) 0-67 x 0-5 inches; (C) 0-62 x 0-5 inches: (D) 

 0-63 X 0-49 inches. A set of three taken at Roseville, on the 5th September, 1904, measures: — 

 Length (A) 0-63 x 0-47 inches; (B) 0-65 x 0-46 inches; (C) 0-65 x 0-47 inches. 



Young birds that have recently left the nest resemble the adults in breeding plumage but 

 are duller in colour, more especially on the throat. Wing 2-15 inches. 



The breeding season commences about the middle of August and continues until the end of 

 January. Nests with eggs are more common in October, November, and December; I have 

 found fresh eggs as early as the 5th September, and as late as the 3rd January. 



