INSESSORES. 155 



the rivers Mokai and Namoi, situated to the northward of 

 Liverpool Plains ; in these last-mentioned localities it was 

 breeding among the large flooded gum-trees bordering the 

 rivers. 



The breeding-season commences in September and con- 

 tinues until January, during which period at least two broods 

 are reared. In the Christmas week of 1839, at which time I 

 was on the plains of the interior, in the direction of the 

 Namoi, the young progeny of the second brood were perched 

 in pairs or threes together, on a dead twig near their nest. 

 They were constantly visited and fed by the adults, who 

 were hawking about for insects in great numbers, some 

 performing their evolutions above the tops and among the 

 branches of the trees, while others were sweeping over the open 

 plain with great rapidity of flight, making in their progress 

 through the air the most rapid and abrupt turns ; at one 

 moment rising to a considerable altitude, and the next 

 descending to within a few feet of the ground, as the insects 

 of which they were in pursuit arrested their attention. In the 

 brushes, on the contrary, the flight of this bird is more soaring 

 and of a much shorter duration, particularly when hawking in 

 the open glades, which frequently teem with insect life. When 

 flying near the ground, the white mark on the rump shows 

 very conspicuously, and strikingly reminds one of the House 

 Martin of our own country. 



Two nests, taken by Gilbert on a small island in Coral 

 Bay, near the entrance of the harbour at Port Essington, were 

 compactly formed of dried wiry grass and the fine plants 

 growing on the beach ; they were placed in a fork of a slender 

 mangrove-tree, within fifteen feet of the water, in which they 

 were growing ; but, like several other Australian birds, the 

 Artamus leucopyyialis often avails itself of the deserted nests 

 of other species instead of building one of its own. Most of 

 those I found breeding on the Mokai had possessed themselves 

 of the forsaken nest of the Grallina melanoleuca, which they 



