1 88 Stray Feathers. I -,hT!,i 



i 



On 28th September the operator was discovered. A White-eyed 

 Crow had devoured one egg and was busy in the act of covering 

 up in newly ploughed land the second egg, unbroken. — Geo. 

 Graham. Scott's Creek (Vict.) 



Playground of the Tooth-billed Bower-Bird. — I am sending 

 you a photo, of the finest playground we found of the Tcoth- 

 billed Bower-Bird (Sccnopceus dentirostris). You will see it was 

 situated amongst a dense tangle of lawyer-palms, and we had to 

 clear one side to get at it with the camera. The playground was 

 large, very clean, and I counted 75 leaves on it, all fresh. At 

 the back, amongst the sticks, may be noticed some of the withered 

 leaves which had been thrown out. The following note may 

 be of interest. In the morning all the birds were noticed low 

 down amongst the scrub, quite close to their playground, whilst 

 towards sundown they were invariably perched high up amongst 

 the topmost branches of the trees, but still in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the playground. They were always very 

 noisy. — E. M. Cornwall. Cairns (N.Q.), 4/10/03. 



* . * * 



A Painted Finch (Emblema picta) in Captivity. — I caught a 

 number of Painted Finches in the M'Donnell Ranges by snaring 

 them with single horsehair, but for some unaccountable reason 

 they all died with the exception of one within 24 hours. I obtained 

 all the native-grass seeds and had the ordinary shop-seeds as 

 well, took every possible care of the birds, but they died so 

 rapidly that I gave them up in despair. The single bird I 

 brought down to Adelaide, and it is thriving in the open-air 

 aviary. There was a nest not 10 yards from my fireplace when 

 I left the camp. The eggs are white, and the nest the coarsest 

 of any Finch I know, one peculiarity of it being that a number 

 of pellets of clay are used in the foundation. I watched the 

 nest built from the first stick. Small sticks are used more than 

 grass, and the nest is much smaller than that of any of our 

 ordinary Finches. — Horace J. Page. Mitcham (S.A.), 1 5/10/03. 



Red-crowned Lorikeet (Ptilosclera versicolor). — As very little 

 appears to be known concerning the nidification of this pretty 

 little Lorikeet, it may interest ornithologists to hear that I saw 

 two broods, three and four respectively, that were taken from 

 their nests — hollow spouts in trees, I understand — about the 

 15th September; they had been in hand a week when I saw 

 them, and the oldest lot would, I should think, just be. able to 

 fiy a short distance had they had their liberty. They appeared 

 to differ but little in their plumage from adult birds, excepting 

 that the red crown was entirely wanting ; three individuals, 

 though, showed the first indications of it by a narrow band of 

 red across the forehead. They were thriving on a mixture of 



