304 stray Feathers. [J^l,^ 



showed that one of the birds held in its claws the remains of a 

 ringtail possum, which it had evidently caught the previous night 

 and retained for another meal. All attempts by shouting failed 

 to make it fly, and it was only by hammering the tree-trunk with 

 a big stick that it was induced to vacate its position. The 

 possum was not dropped in its passage to another tree, but 

 remained dangling from its claws during flight, and was placed 

 on another limb and again stood on by the bird. The third and 

 even fourth flushing had a like result, and, when my boy and I 

 left the bird to its own reflections it was to see it bowing and nodding 

 sedately as we took our departure, as if to say, " Now are you 

 satisfied ? " — ^Tom Tregellas. 27/1/19. 



Red-headed Woodpecker [Mclanerpes crythrocephalus) and its 

 Nest. — Only 14 yards from the back door of Mr. Hammond 

 Brown's house, near Baltimore, one of these Woodpeckers had 

 made its nest. I was interested in watching it go in and out of 

 its hole. The hole was bored in a dead bough about 40 feet from 

 the ground, was circular (about i^ inches in diameter) ; it goes 

 2 J inches in a horizontal direction, and then 12 to 18 inches down, 

 somewhat enlarged at the bottom. The eggs are laid in the chips. 

 The chips were sound wood, and Mr. Brown told me that the bird 

 occupied only i^ days from start to completion of this nest — 

 truly, I thought, a remarkable feat, considermg the hardness of 

 the timber. The bill strikes one as shaped like a narrow chisel, 

 sharper in this species than is the case with many American Wood- 

 peckers, but blunt compared with a carpenter's tool, and yet 

 the bird I was watching had done all the work in the brief time 

 quoted. I met with four or five species of Woodpecker in the 

 Baltimore (Maryland) woods, and in every case the blows, instead 

 of being sledge-hammer-like, were extremely rapid ; nevertheless, 

 the method seems to be effective. — Edwin Ashby. " Witunga," 

 Blackwood, S.A. 



* * * 



City Observations. — We have been interested during the past 

 few months in a pair of Blue Wrens which have just reared their 

 fourth brood for the season in a small garden in the grounds of the 

 old Treasury, Spring-street. The positions chosen for the nests 

 were not more than 30 feet from perhaps the busiest tram-line 

 in Melbourne, and separated from it only by a picket fence. All 

 four nests, though in different positions, were built of the same 

 material, which was removed by the female after the departure 

 of each brood. The male did not assist in the work of incubation, 

 but, up to the last nest, took his share of the feeding duties while 

 the young were in the nest, and assumed full control of them 

 when they left it. While he fed the fledgelings in the gardens 

 about, the female laid and incubated the next clutch of eggs. 

 The last nest we watched closely from day to day, and also 



