624 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



the remains of Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and caterpillars. 

 While searching for food, its motions, although very active, 

 are characterized by a remarkable degree of quietude, the bird 

 leaping from branch to branch in the gentlest manner possible, 

 picking an insect here and there, and prying for others among 

 the leaves and the crevices of the bark M^ith the most scrutiniz- 

 ing care. Its flight is quick and undulating, and when passing 

 from one tree to another on a sunny day, the brilliant green 

 colouring of the male shoves very beautifully. Like the true 

 Cuckoos, it always deposits its single egg in the nest of 

 another bird, those of the Maluri and Acanthi zee being gene- 

 rally selected ; in New South Wales the Malurus cyaneus and 

 the Geohasileus chysorrhous are among others the foster- 

 parents ; in Western Australia the nests of the Malurus spleri- 

 dens are resorted to ; and it is a remarkable fact, that the egg 

 is mostly deposited in nests of a domed form, with a very 

 small hole for an entrance. 



The stomach is capacious, membranous, and slightly lined 

 with hair. 



Its note is a mournful whistle, very like that usually em- 

 ployed to call a dog. 



The egg is of a clear olive-brown, somewhat paler at the 

 smaller end, about eleven-sixteenths of an inch long by half 

 an inch in breadth. 



The adult male has the head, all the upper surface and 

 wings of a rich coppery bronze ; primaries brown with a 

 bronzy lustre ; tail bronzy brown, crossed near the tip with a 

 dull black band ; tho two lateral feathers on each side with a 

 series of large oval spots of white across the inner web, and a 

 series of smaller ones opposite the interspaces on the outer 

 web ; third and fourth feathers on each side with a small oval 

 spot of white at the tip of the inner web ; all the under sur- 

 face white, crossed by numerous broad conspicuous bars of 

 rich deep bronze ; irides brownish yellow ; feet dark brown, 

 the interspaces of the scales mealy. 



