28 SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



When nesting, the old magpies are often very savage, and will fly down and 

 snap savagely over one's head to drive him away from the vicinity of their 

 nests. In captivity the dispositions of magpies are markedly dissimilar ; one 

 mav he quiet and friendly and will come squawking up in a very amicable 

 manner, while another delights in waylaying the children and attacking 

 their bare legs with its powerful sharp boak. A magpie under domestication 

 learns many curious habits — some good and some bad. After watching the 

 gardeners planting out seedlings he will often follow around and pull them 

 them up through a spirit of mischievous curiosity. One magpie I owned 

 imitated the cackling of a laying hen ; it used to crawl under a hedge 

 close to the fowl-house, and after cackling in a most perfect imitation of an 

 old hen, would creep away when the owner came to look for the egg, as if he 

 thoroughly enjoyed the joke. Some learn to whistle tunes, and others can 

 talk with a more or less limited vocabulary ; but in captivity one never hears 

 the glorious trills and piping flute-like notes of the free magpie. 



The Silver-eye {Zosterops coerulescsns Latham). 



Gould's Handbook, vol. I, p. 587, No. 360 ; Leach's Bird Book, p. 155, No. 334. 



These quaint little birds are well known in our suburban gardens, and 

 might almost be considered semi-domesticated, they are so tame and fearless 

 when hunting through the rose bushes and shrubs for aphides, small moths,, 

 and other soft-bodied insects. They are popularly known as Silver-eyes or 

 White-eyes, on account of the curious ring of small white feathers round the 

 eye, which gives them a rather comical but characteristic appearance. The- 

 Sydney schoolboy, who often clips his words, is content to call them just- 

 " Sivies." This species has a wide range around the Australian coast from 

 South Australia to Queensland, but, though occasionally recorded from inland 

 districts, it is only a stray visitor over the western side of the mountains. 

 I have seen them in Bendigo, Victoria, and they have been noted as 

 far north-west as the Murray. They have a wide range over Tasmania, and 

 are established in New Zealand, where they were first noticed in 1856. There 

 is some question as to whether they are indigenous, or emigrants from 

 Australia, but as they are also common in Fiji, New Caledonia, and the New 

 Hebrides, they may be natives of all these islands. 



A second species, Zosterops gouldi, which takes the place of the species- 

 common in Western Australia, is known as the Grape-bird or Fig-bird, 

 Though an insectivorous bird all through the winter months and early 

 summer when insect pests are at their worst, the Silver-eye, like a number oi 

 other honey-suckers belonging to the family Meliphagidce, has adapted its 

 habits to its surroundings, and finds its curious brush-tipped tongue (which 

 should be used for brushing up the honey on the flowers of the honey-suckles 

 and other native flowering shrubs) admirably adapted, in conjunction with its 

 sharp-pointed beak, for sucking up the juices of grapes, persimmons, figs, and 

 other dead-ripe fruit. Though sometimes spoken of as the " blight bird," oi 



