Vol. XXI 

 1921 



] Camera Craft. 143 



struck with this liackiiij; niovenient. \\'hene\er the Tvee-creciie'- 

 wislied, for any reason, to proceed down a hmb or tree-trunk, it 

 steadfastly refused to turn about and move head downward. It 

 hopped backward instead, and ap])eared ecjually as agile as wher. 

 hopping upward. 



The Silver-eye {Zostcrops dorsal is) I have not f(jund at any 

 time a satisfactory subject for |)hotography, and three or four 

 attemi)ts had left me with the impression that the greedy little 

 bird showed rather a heartless unconcern for eggs or young. 

 But a pair found nesting at Oakleigh in November last were 

 more trustful than the average. Even these birds were i)icture(l 

 only after a three-hour wait. A thirty- foot thread was stretched 

 from the shutter release through a furze hedge near by. Behind 

 this hedge I sat. In a quarter of an hour one bird had a})- 

 proached quite close to the nest, but perched in such a position 

 as to be hidden by the nest from the stare of the lens. Every 

 few minutes she elexated her head ever so slowly, regarded the 

 camera mcist comically over the to]) of the nest, then disappeared 

 again just as slowly. This went on for three-quarters of an 

 hour, after which I left the spot for cfuite thirty minutes. I 

 crept back fully expecting the bird to have become accustomed to 

 the apparatus. Considerably to my amusement and much to 

 my disgust, I found the hide-and-seek business still going on. 

 Later in the day, however, several plates were exposed. — R. T. 

 LiTTL^joiiNS. R.A.O.U., Melbourne, August 25th, 1921. 

 * * * 



Nesting of Tree-creepers. — This has been an extraordinary 

 year for nesting birds, both in the South and North of Eastern 

 Australia. It is not unusual to find birds breeding in Oueens- 

 land during the autumn or winter months, as many species 

 have been doing this year, but it is an event out of the common 

 to find, as some of us did a few months ago, such birds as 

 Yellow-tufted Honey eaters and Yellow-tailed Tits tending 

 babes in Victoria during April and May. Now comes word 

 from the same State that Brown Tree-cree])ers ha\e made an 

 unusually early start with their menage. 



July had not gone when a particular pair of these birds 

 brought fresh material to an old kettle, stuck upon a post, in 

 which they have been wont to nest for many years. On Aug- 

 ust 5th, there were two eggs in the novel nest, and two more 

 were expected. Last year two broods were reared in that 

 situation ; with the early start this year, it is suggested by the 

 "official" owners of the kettle that four broods may be pro- 

 duced dviring the current spring. 



It is not the early breeding that interests, however, so much 

 as the remarkable tenacity of the Tree-creepers for the par- 

 ticular nesting-site. As the i)hotograph indicates, the kettle 

 was merely hung carelessly on a fence-post. The site was not 

 twenty yards from a house, a bush home in an orchard. Yet 

 in this precarious situation the- Tree-creepers have nested dur- 

 ing eight consecutive years! That it is tlie same pair of bird~> 



