Art. II. — Description of some Australian Birds'' Eggs 

 and Nests collected at Bloonifield, near Cook town, 

 Queensland. 



By D. Le Souef. 



[Communicated by Pi'ofessor Baldwin Spencer.] 

 [Eead 8th March, 1894.] 



Crescent-marked Oriole (Minieta flavo-cincta). 



These birds were occasionally seen in the open country, and I 

 found their open nest on 3rd November, and secured the parent 

 birds; it was suspended from a fork near the end of a thin bough 

 of a Melaleuca tree, about forty feet from the ground, and 

 difficult to get at. It contained two eggs on the point of 

 hatching. 



The tree was growing beside a waterhole, and a Quoy's crow- 

 shrike had its nest in an adjoining tree. The nest is very 

 similar in appearance to that of a Friar bird, and is outwardly 

 composed entirely of strips of bark off a small species of 

 Eucalyptus which grows in damp localities ; the inside of the 

 structure is liiaed with tendrils from the creepers in the scrub, 

 which was about 300 yards away, it measures externally seven 

 inches in length by five inches broad, with a depth of four and 

 a quarter inches, and internal measurement three and three- 

 quarter inches long by two and three-quarter inches broad, and 

 three inches in depth. The eggs are nearly oval in form and of a 

 pinkish-white colour, with a few rounded markings of a dark 

 brown colour, especially towards the larger end. There are also 

 some light grey markings, which have the appearance of being 



20 14i . 



under the surface of the shell. They measure A — , x — -^ inch 



^ 16 16 



^22 16 . , 



This egg has not been described before. 



