270 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
this active and energetic bird with its olive-green head and tail, 
gray back and pale under parts and the ring of white feathers 
around the eye is of never-failing interest to the ornithologist. 
The smallest and one of the most peculiar birds of the island is 
the rifleman (Acanthidositta chloris), a shy and active arboreal 
bird only three inches long, possessing some of the habits and 
appearance, except for color, of our winter wren. It is found only 
in the denser beech forests where it runs up the trunks of trees 
in a spiral manner something like a creeper. I saw this bird only 
in Gollins Valley near Wellington. 
The family Meliphagide is represented by five species, two of 
which, the tui or parson bird (Prosthemadera nove-zealandie) 
and the bell bird (Anthornis melanura) are the sweetest songsters 
in the New Zealand forests. The parson bird, so called because of 
the shining black plumage, and in the male, the presence of two 
fluffy feathers depending from the throat, possesses a clear, flute- 
like note and has considerable, imitative ability. It is fairly 
plentiful in the less frequented and wooded portions of the Do- 
minion. During the course of an afternoon I came upon several 
small flocks high up in the trees near Lake Roto Ehu. The bell 
bird has a great variety of sweet, musical notes, one series of 
which is responsible for the common name. This bird, too, is a 
lover of the more remote forested areas. 
One of the rarest birds in New Zealand is a muscicapid known 
as the North Island robin (Miro longipes), a blackish bird about 
51% inches in length and in general appearance quite unlike our 
own robin. It was my good fortune to see three individuals of 
this species in the Mamaku bush and Mr. Hamilton, a colonial, 
who had done a great deal of collecting in the Dominion, also had 
at this time, his first view of the species in the flesh. They are 
quiet birds keeping close to the ground where they feed upon 
grubs and insects. 
The family Muscicapide boasts of three commoner represent- 
atives, the tomtit (Myzomoira toitot), the grey warbler (Maorigery- 
gone igata), and the pied fantail (Rhipidura flabellifera). All of 
these are more or less familiar in cultivated areas where, on ac- 
count of their almost exclusively insectivorous diet, they are high- 
ly beneficial. 
The fantail with something of the habits of the swallows, which 
latter are altogether absent in the Dominion, takes their place 
largely as destroyers of insect pests. Among low, shrubby bushes 
