CALORMS. 265 



up a very rocky side creek of the main river, when I observed a Little Wood Swallow skim 

 right up the precipitous face of a cliff and then back again, and thought that I could distinguish 

 something like a nest in a very small cleft, I climbed up to the spot, and there in a cavity 

 hardly large enough to admit my hand, was a loosely constructed nest, formed of bits of spinifex 

 pressed into the cleft by the weight of the bird into a shallow cup-shaped depression. It contained 

 one egg, which I left, and returning in a week's time secured a pair. Lower down the creek I 

 observed a second pair of birds and located their nest in a hollow spout of a small gum tree, from 

 which I eventually took three eggs. Still lower down the rocky sides of this creek where it had 

 developed into a massive precipice, 1 found another nest in a perpendicular joint of the rock, in 

 a small cavernous hollow and about two feet from the floor, and a few days later took three eggs 

 from it. A fourth nest I found was by the main Coongan River, and was built in an old mud 

 nest of the Fairy Martin (Pdrochelidon ai'iel), from which the spout had been broken away, and 

 I also took three fresh eggs from this nest. A colony of Fairy Martins were also breeding a few 

 feet away." 



The nest, an open cup-shaped structure of twigs and plant stems lined with rootlets, is placed 

 in the end of a hollow branch or in a cavity in the trunk of a tree ; in some instances the nest 

 consists only of a scanty lining of fibrous rootlets to the hole. 



The eggs are three in number for a setting, oval in form, the shell being close-grained, 

 smooth and lustrous. They are of a dull white ground colour which is spotted and blotched 

 with yellowish and light umber brown intermingled with underlying spots and blotches of faint 

 slaty-grey, the markings being confined principally to the thicker end where they form in some 

 places coalesced patches, or more or less irregular zones. A set of three, taken by Mr. H. G. 

 Barnard, at Duaringa, Queensland, measures : — Length (A) 07 x 0-55 inches ; (B) 071 x 0-56 

 inches ; (C) o;6g x 0-55 mches. Another set of three taken by him at Bimbi, Duaringa, on the 

 i6th October, 1908, measures : — Length (A) 073 x 0-57 inches; (B) 077 x 0-58 inches; (C) 

 075 X o'6 inches. 



Family STURNID^. 



O-eHVlS 0-A.IjOI33SriS, Gray. 



Calornis metallica. 



SHINING CALORNIS. 

 Lamprolornis metallica, Temva., PL Col, Tom II., pi. 266 (1824). 

 Aplonis metallica, Gould, Bds. Austr., fol. Vol. Suppl., pi. .3.3 (1869). 



Calornis metallica, Gould, Handbk. Bds. Austr., Vol. I., p. 477 (1865); Sharpe, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus., 

 Vol. XIII., p. 138 (1890). 

 Adult m.^le — (renend cohnir above (/lossy oil-tjreen n-itli purphsli reflections: hiudneck ijlossy- 

 green; crown of the head, nape, and centre of back puridish-violct ; quills and tail feathers black, 

 glossed with dull steel blue; cheeks and throat steel-green with a purplish shade, except on the lengthened 

 lanceolate feathers on the lower throat; foreneck puiplish-violet ; remainder of the under surface dull 

 oil-greeu glossed with purple on the sides of the breast; under tail-coverts steel-green; bill black; legs 

 and feet black; iris red. Total length 9 inches, wing 4-'3, tail .'^-1, bill 0-7, tarsus 085. 

 Adult female — Similar in plumage to the male. 



Distribution — North-eastern Queensland, Islands of Torres Strait, New Guinea. 



/■ |(^HE range of the Shining Calornis, or more commonly known " Starling " or "Weaver 



J- Bird," in Australia, extends from Cape York to the neighbourhood of the Herbert 



River District, in North-eastern Queensland. It is a strictly migratory species, commencing to 



build shortly after its arrival and departing again after the breeding season is over. These birds 



1 



