400 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



brown, broadly margined with pale brown ; tail pale brown, 

 crossed with indistinct bars of a darker tint ; irides hght 

 brown ; upper mandible olive-brown, the cutting edges light 

 yellowish white ; lower mandible bluish white ; tarsi and feet 

 light reddish flesh-colour. 



Sp. 245. SPHENCEACUS GRAMINEUS, Gould. 



Little Grass-Bird, 



Sphenceacus gramineus, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc, part xiii. p. 19. 

 Megalums gramineus, Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds^ vol. i. p. 169, 



Megalurus, sp. 5. 

 Poodytes gramineus, Cab. Mus. Hein., Theil i. p. 42. 



Sphenceacus gramineus, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol., vol, iii. 

 pi. 36. 



Although the present species is very generally dispersed 

 over the whole of the southern and western portions of Aus- 

 tralia and Tasmania, in all situations suitable to its habits, it 

 is as little known to the colonists as if it were not in existence, 

 which is readily accounted for by its recluse nature and- the 

 localities it frequents, the thick beds of grasses, rushes, and 

 other kinds of herbage growing in low, damp, and wet places 

 on the mainland, and on such islands as those of Green and 

 Actseon, in D'Entrecasteaux's Channel, being its favourite 

 places of resort. It is a very shy species, and will almost allow 

 itself to be trodden upon before it will quit the place of its 

 concealment ; in the open grassy beds of the flats it is more 

 easily driven from its retreat, but even then it merely flies a 

 few yards, and pitches again among the herbage. 



Its song consists of four or five plaintively-uttered notes, 

 repeated five or six times in succession. 



The nest is generally a very compact structure ; in Western 

 Australia it is formed of the soft tops of the flowering part 

 of the reeds, and the thin skin-like coating of the reed- 

 stalks, but occasionally of fine swamp grasses, and is always 



