^8 Macgillivra^-, a New Honey-eater. [ixf'o'ci 



The birds are not pJentitul, though we afterwards obtained 

 several specimens. 



Dissection proved that these birds feed mostly upon small 

 insects, and the state of the sexual organs seemed to indicate that 

 the nesting season is in the summer months, after the beginning 

 of the wet season. Nothing, however, is yet known of the 

 nidification of the s})ecies. 



Notes on the Yellow-bellied Shrike-Tit, Falcunculus 



frontatus. 



By a. H. Chisholm, R.A.O.U., Maryborough, Vic. 



Many years ago the Yellow-belUed Shrike-Tit {Falcunculus 

 frontatus) was probably as plentiful about the Maryborough (Vic.) 

 district as Mr. A. J. Campbell reports it to have been adjacent 

 to Melbourne. Its fearlessness, however, made the showy bird 

 an easy target for thoughtless boys, and, accordingly, its numbers 

 soon markedly decreased. When the persecution lessened the 

 bird became noticeable again, and was casually known to us boys 

 of a later generation as the "Yellow-hammer" — this by reason 

 of its bark-hammering proclivities. But we knew nothing of its 

 nest till, a little over ten years ago, Mr. Donald Macdonald wrote 

 this passage in a Melbourne magazine : — 



" The gem nest to which I refer is beautiful alike in structure 

 and colour. I saw it for the first time last week, built in the frail, 

 topmost bough of a gum-tree. It was the nest of the Crested 

 Shrike, a bird conspicuous by its yellow breast and thick, strong 

 bill. It builds generally in a gum sapling too frail to bear the 

 weight of even the smallest boy, and that yellow nest, placed just 

 out of reach, has tantalized many a collector, for it is the find of 

 a lifetime. ... At first glance you would assume that the 

 outside of the nest was made entirely from pickings of a new 

 hempen rope. The material is apparently fibre, for, even among 

 the dried grass-blades of many colours round about, you can find 

 nothing exactly like it. This is bound closely together outside, 

 the general line of the mateiial being up and down. Inside, much 

 the same material is used, but it runs in threads round and round 

 the structure, the whole making a warm and beautifully sym- 

 metrical nest." 



" The find of a lifetime ! " Was not that enough to further 

 warm the enthusiasm of a bird-nesting boy ? I looked at the 

 Shrike-Tit with a new interest after that. Not till several years 

 later, however, did I see the nest in situ. I observed a pair of the 

 birds with a trio of fledgehngs about a certain belt of timber in 

 the spring of igi2, and in the following year gave, that locality 

 close attention. The Shrike-Tits are constant to a favourable 

 locality, and, sure enough, the pair in question ceased their happy- 

 go-lucky wanderings in August and came again about a fossicker's 



