DIC.EUM. 217 



Mr. E. H. Lane and Mr. Leslie Oakes, on Wambangalang Station, near Dubbo, found between 

 the 17th October and 30th November, 1892, no less than thirteen nests, with eggs or young; all 

 were built in saplings or stringy-bark trees at a height varying from five to fifteen feet from the 

 ground. A nest from which three fresh eggs were taken on the 14th November, 1897, at Pennant 

 Hills, was brought me for examination. It was built in a leafy branch of an apricot tree, at a 

 height of five feet from the ground. A nest found at Eastwood, by Mr. S. W. Moore, on the 

 26th December, 1893, he attempted but could not get at a week later, for it was built in the thin 

 terminal leafy twigs of a Eucalyptus, fully forty feet from the ground. One I found on the 17th 

 March, 1894, ^^ Enfield, which the young had apparently just left, was built in a stunted gum 

 sapling close to the roadside, and six feet from the ground. At Bay view, on the Hawkesbury River, 

 Mr. A. E. Ivatt informed me that he saw a bird engaged in the construction of a nest near the road- 

 side on the 2nd January, 1899. Writing me in 1906, Mr. E. H. Lane remarks: — "-In 1900 I found 

 four nests of Dicinim hirundinaccum at Wambangalang Station, near Dubbo, during October, and 

 one on the 4th November. To two found on the 23rd October, I saw the birds carrying what I 

 took to be lining material so left them. On examining them a week later I found each 

 containing three eggs within a day or two of hatching. Either one bird was feeding the other 

 on the nest, or like I have seen the Red-capped Robin, was doing a little finishing work; I believe 

 the latter, judging from the appearance of the material carried and the bird entering the nest, 

 which would not be necessary for feeding purposes. I mention these incidents for the actions 

 of the birds caused me to lose two sets of eggs. One nest was only two and a half feet from 

 the ground, but so certain was I that the bird was only lining or finishing it off that I did not 

 go within some yards, fearing the birds would desert it. All the nests I have taken have 

 been in saplings or stringy-bark trees, gums or white-box, and have ranged in height from two 

 and a half to thirty feet from the ground." 



The eggs are three in number for a sitting, elongate-oval in form, pure white, the shell being 

 close-grained, smooth and lustreless. A set of three in the Australian Museum collection, taken 

 at Ballina, Richmond River, in October, 1892, measures as follows: — Length (A) o-66 x 0-47 

 inches; {B)o-56 x 0^47 inches; (C)o'65 x 0-46 inches. A set of three taken by Mr. Leslie Oakes 

 on Wambangalang Station, near Dubbo, New South Wales, measures:— Length (A) 07 x 0-46 

 inches; (B) 0-69 x 0-45 inches; (C) 07 x 0-46 inches. 



Young males resemble the adult female. Semi-adult males exhibit the plumage of both 

 sexes, the ashy-brown feathers of the head and upper parts being mottled with glossy-steel blue 

 feathers, some of the feathers on the throat and fore neck being scarlet, and the under tail-coverts 

 pale scarlet. The wing-measurement of a specimen in the Australian Museum in this stage of 

 plumage is 2-4 inches, and exceeds that of any fully adult bird in the collection. 



September until the end of February constitutes the normal breeding season of this species 

 in Eastern .\ustralia. 



Family PARDALOTID^. 



CrenVLS ^u^IS:D.A.IjOT"Cr3, Vieillol. 



Pardalotus ornatus. 



STRIATED DIAMOND-BIRD. 

 Pardalotus ornatus, Tomm,, PL Col., Tom. IV., pi. 394, fig. 1 (182G); Sharpe, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus., 

 Vol. X, p. 55 (1885). 



Pardalotus striatus, Gould, Bds. Austr., fol.. Vol. IV., pi. 38 (1848); id., Handbk. Bds. Aust., Vol. 

 L, p. 161 (1865). 



Ccl 



