•267 



the same nest every year. I picked up a nest blown down by a high wind, it is very loosely 

 built of fibre, principally from bark of trees, but a good proportion consisted of the dead 

 twisted tendrils of a vine. Calornis mdaUica is a great fruit robber, but takes nothing that 

 it cannot swallow whole, hence Mulberry-trees suffer most from its depredations. In 1897 

 these birds were first observed on the 3rd September, and in the following year they arrived 

 precisely on the same date, and went at once to the stableman's house to find the Pencil Cedar 

 tree they had bred in the previous year ; this had been felled, but after a long and noisy debate 

 they decided to nest in a tree close by." 



The late Mr. W. S. Day, writing on the 7th September, i8gi, from Kuranda, near Cairns, 

 remarks : — " The Starlings are now breeding in a ' White-wood ' tree near here ; some are 



making new nests, others are busy repair- 

 ing old ones. The nests are all built on 

 the lower branches of the tree, and are 

 about one hundred to one hundred and 

 fifty feet from the ground. They always 

 select this kind of tree, and one with 

 parasites or creepers growing on it." 



Mr. A. F. Smith presented to the 

 Trustees of the Australian Museum six 

 nests procured by him on Hambledon 

 Plantation, near Cairns. They vary from 

 almost globular to oval in form, the 

 entrance in some being spout or tunnel- 

 like, and running near the whole length 

 of the nest, ingress and egress being 

 obtained towards the middle or the bottom 

 of the structure, and the entrance itself 

 more or less concealed. Outwardly they 

 are somewhat roughly constructed of long 

 curly tendrils of a climbing plant, inter- 

 mingled with palm-fibre and skeletons of 

 leaves, the inside of the nest at the bottom 

 being lined with dried strips of palm 

 leaves. An average nest measures extern- 

 ally ten inches in length by eight inches 

 in breadth, and across the entrance two 



inches. They were suspended at the top to the leafy ends of the lower branches of a 



high tree. 



The eggs, two or three in number for a sitting, vary from rounded to elongate oval in form, 

 the shell being close-grained, smooth and more or less lustrous. They are of a delicate green 

 or greenish-white ground colour, which is dotted, freckled, spotted or blotched with different 

 shades of purplish-red and underlying markings of purplish-grey ; some specimens have a few 

 large blotches or spots on the larger end only ; others have the markings uniformly distributed 

 over the surface of the shell, or have only scattered and almost invisible dots, and some are 

 almost devoid of markings. Occasionally some of the markings are rust-red or reddish-brown, 

 and in one specimen now before me a single large blotch is of an ochreous hue. A set of 

 two taken near Ingham, at the mouth of the Herbert River, measures: — Length (A) i x 0-87 

 inches; (B) 1-05 x o-88 inches. A set of three taken at Cape York measures: — Length (A) 1-2 

 X o-i8 inches; (B) i-8 x 0-82 inches ; (C) ri"] x 078 inches. 



NEST OF SHINING CALORNIS. 



