148 -5/yay Feathers. [zsf'"oc.. 



Query — Did the Brown Flycatcher follow the larger bird to secure 

 insects disturbed by the " scissors-grinding " notes ? It really 

 seemed so, for the Restless Flycatcher did not altogether approve 

 of the partnership, and tried to chase his attendant away more 

 than once. But the latter was not to be denied, and the two 

 were together till I lost sight of them. 



On another occasion I had an opportunity of seeing a Restless 

 Flycatcher at close range. The grinding notes began very low, 

 seeming to come from right down in the bird's throat, and 

 gradually worked up to full strength, when the bill was gaping 

 wide like that of a brooding bird suffering from the heat. As 

 characteristic as the rasping notes, too, are the calls of the 

 Restless Flycatcher ; I do not think that the " whirring extra- 

 ordinary " is in any sense a call. The most common of these is 

 a note that would be phonetically expressed as " Britch " — 

 usually uttered while the bird is zigzagging over the tree-tops — 

 and next comes a penetrating pipe, " Pee-pee-pee, towhee-twee- 

 twee." A Seisitra that I frequently saw and heard calling thus 

 while perched on headstones in a cemetery did not seem at all 

 out of place. In its nesting the Restless Flycatcher is by no 

 means so business-like or neat as the bird it is often mistaken for, 

 Rhipidura motacilloides. Last spring I knew of an orchard 

 wherein a pair of each species began building at the same time. 

 The Black-and-White Fantail's nest rapidly took form, but the 

 Flycatchers could not get fairly going. They would scratch 

 about on the dry branchlet selected as the nesting-site, but could 

 not get the fibres to stay in position against the strong breezes, 

 and finally gave up the attempt. Earlier in the same season I 

 saw other Restless Flycatchers similarly troubled, for the winds 

 ran high in the dry spring of last year. One pair was twice 

 thwarted in an endeavour to build, but succeeded on the third 

 attempt (in a new position), whereupon a pair of Black-and-White 

 Fantails built in the same tree, on the identical spot that the 

 Flycatchers had unsuccessfully selected in their second attempt. 

 —A. H. Chisholm. Maryborough (Vic), 6/8/15. 



From Magazines, &c. 



Nest Built in Trench. — Corporal Percy Smith, in a letter, dated 

 loth June, from (rallipoli, to a friend in Bendigo, which was 

 published in the Melbourne Herald of 7th August, 1915, states that 

 a bird's nest was found in a trench in which a shell had just 

 burst. " Strange things happen in the trenches at times," he 

 writes. '" One of the most extraordinary was the finding of a bird's 

 nest with four eggs. While going through the communication 

 trenches a small bird was seen to fly out of the side, and I began 

 to look where it came from. A shell had burst in the trench, and 

 dirt had fallen off the sides. Among the larger pieces of earth 



