SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 31 



the time when Gould published his handbook. This cuckoo is a migratory 

 species ia the southern portion of Australia ; it arrives in Tasmania in Sep- 

 tember, returning to the mainland in the following January. Like all the 

 members of the group, it is a solitary bird of a retiring nature. It does not 

 come much into the open country, and if it were not for its loud call-note it 

 would easily escape observation. 



Campbell gives a list of eighteen different birds in whose nests the white 

 freckled egg of this cuckoo has been collected, and they include tits, wrens,^ 

 honey-eaters, robins, wood-swallows, and rock-warblers, most of which form 

 domed or covered nests. Two different species of cuckoos have been recorded 

 as laying their eggs in the same tit's nest. For a long time the naturalists 

 were unable to decide how the cuckoo managed to lay her egg in such a small 

 nest as that which she usually selected. Careful field observations have 

 proved that after laying her egg upon the grass, the cuckoo watches her 

 opportunity when the mother bird leaves her nest, to cuddle her egg up 

 between the bill and the breast, and flying upward push it into the freshly 

 built nest. Why such birds acquired these lazy parasitic habits it is very 

 hard to understand, especially as we have in the Coucal a closely related 

 bird that builds a large nest of her own and rears her own nestlings. Among 

 the remarkable cuckoos is the Channel-bill (Scythrops novce-hollandicB), a 

 large bird ranging all over Australia to Tasmania, and also found in Nev»^ 

 Guinea. She adopts the crow, and some of the larger shrikes, as foster- 

 mothers for her offspring. 



The Blue Wren {Malurus cyanens Ellis). 

 Gould's Handbook, vol. I, p. 317, No. 185 ; Leach's Bird Book, p. 144, No. 30. 



Though this dainty little bird has been long known under the name t)f 

 Malurus cyaneus, in Leach's book the specific name of Cyanochlamys is attached 

 to it. This seems a great pity, for Leach's book was primarily intended for 

 bird lovers and school children, and its author might have used the old name 

 of Cyaneus, even if not quite the latest in modern classification. 



It was figured and described in White's "Voyage to New South Wales " 

 as the Superb-warbler. This name still sticks to it, though it has been 

 gradually superseded by the more popular one of Blue Wren, which I hope 

 in time to see universally adopted by the children of Australia, instead 

 of Cocktail — a name by which it is often known in New South Wales, but 

 which has nothing to lecommend it in comparison with our typical and 

 euphonious preference. Dr. Bennett, in his " Gatherings of a Naturalist in. 

 Australia" (1860), calls it the Purple- warbler, but I have not seen this most 

 unsuitable name repeated by modern writers. It is certainly not a purple 

 wren. 



The wrens are well represented in Australia by sixteen species. They 

 comprise some of our most beautiful little birds, usually moving about in 

 small communities, and being found in all classes of country, from our 



