8o Chisholm, Notes on the Yellow-bellied Shrike-Tit. I 



Emu 

 5t Oct. 



tree, I watched the male till my neck became stiff, and was 

 rewarded by seeing the female arrive, flash up to the topmost 

 fringe of the bushes, and weave away at a small cluster that was 

 assuming cup shape. What satisfaction it was to have found the 

 much-desired nest at last ! It was a privilege, too, to couch by 

 while the Tits worked, and to be supplied with practical evidence 

 against the insinuation that the male has either no ability or no 

 inclination to assist in nest-building. The female is certainly the 

 leading spirit in the enterprise, but the male does his part by 

 bringing a share of the material, and at times, too, varies the 

 practice of passing the fibres to the female by stitching them in 

 himself. Probably only the more delicate worker attends to the 

 weaving and binding of the web-hke substance on the outside of 

 the nest. Around the rim this is managed by the bird sitting in 

 the nest that its breast is modelling, and drawing the bill gently 

 upwards — a pretty practice that the Tit ha^ in common with the 

 Flycatchers and some other birds that build soft, open nests. 



In noting these building arrangements I had not only this one 

 pair of birds to rely on, for the experience gained in locating the 

 first nest helped me to find several others, and by mid-November 

 I had listed seven of these dainty dwellings. None was situated 

 lower than 25 feet, and some few swayed at the tops of trees 

 50 feet in height. And when the wind blew, how the nests did 

 rock ! 



Toward the end of that November the R.A.O.U. session in 

 South Australia intervened, and when I returned most of my 

 birds had left the nests. The collecting of a few of the deserted 

 nests then gave the opportunity for examining the building 

 material. This proved what I had suspected through repeatedly 

 seeing the strong-billed birds hammering at the green bark of 

 eucalypts — that the nests are constructed almost wholly of the 

 yellowish, fibrous bark underlying the rougher exterior of the 

 trees. This is beaten into very fine shreds and bound tightly 

 with spiders' webs, filmy substance from cocoons, and, occasion- 

 ally, lichen from the old " snake " fences. Of grass little is used 

 — ^just a dozen or so fine bents to fine the bottom of the nest. 

 But the Shrike-Tits are not absolutely constant to this material. 

 Shrewd workers in every way, the birds readily adapt themselves 

 to a particular environment. Last spring (1914) a pair that built 

 in a tall blue gum in a Maryborough public park constructed the 

 walls of the nest of soft, pulpy wood, which the female dug from 

 a dry limb of the tree. Inside the nest fine rushes from the lake- 

 side were used. 



Remembering that the lately-discovered F. whitci also builds 

 a nest of fine bark-shreds,* it would be surprising if the only other 

 member of the genus {F . leiicogaster, of Western Australia), created 

 a departure by using nothing but " the very finest of dried grasses," 

 as suggested by Mr. F. L. Whitlock.f The nest described by him 



* R A.O.U. Bulletin No. 4. f Emu. vol. xi., p. 243. 



