Vol. XVII, 

 1918 



1 Chisholm, Two Singing Species of Gerygone. 153 



in the Botanic Gardens, less than two miles away. In all cases, 

 however, the songs are most melodious. The chattering prelude 

 to one bar is akin to that of G. alhogiilaris, but the songs themselves 

 have naught of plaintiveness ; they are sprightly, varied, and 

 moderately continuous, and place their author among the best 

 of Australia's small bird-singers. 



The precise distribution of the Singing Fly-eater has not yet 

 been determined locally. Mr. J. Colclough, of the Queensland 

 Museum, reports having seen the bird at Gympie (100 miles north 

 of Brisbane), and I have listened to it at Maroochydore (60 miles 

 north of Brisbane), but Mr. E. M. Cornwall has not noted the 

 species so far north as Mackay. 



The breeding season is probably indeterminate. Personally, I 

 have only found the bird nesting in the springtime, but Mr. R. 

 Illidge has had nests in his fig-trees at Bulimba (a suburb of 

 Brisbane) both in November and June. Incidentally, the female 

 of the species, who seems to do by far the greater part of the work 

 of nest-building, is one of the most rapid little workers that ever 

 I have watched. Both birds, in fact, seem possessed of much 

 of the high vitality of their ecstatic kin-spirit, Dicaiim hiritndin- 

 aceiim, the Australian Flower-pecker. 



Bird Notes from New South Wales. 

 Communicated by Dr. E. A. D'Ombrain, M.D., R.A.O.U., 



Sydney. 



The following notes were made by my son, A. F. D'Ombrain. 

 When one considers that the locality is but 8 miles from the 

 G.P.O., Sydney, and within an hour's walk from a suburban 

 railway station, the facts become more interesting. 



The area referred to in these notes, except where otherwise 

 stated, is that lying to the north of the northern shores of Middle 

 Harbour, and bounded on the east by the Manly coast-line, to 

 the west by the Milson's Point-Hornsby railway line. The 

 country is all of the heathy kind loved by Honey-eaters and typical 

 of the Hawkesbury sandstone areas, and composed of huge masses 

 of grey sandstone tumbled and tossed into all sorts of shapes, 

 forming overhanging shelves, caves, crannies, &c. (ideal places for 

 the Rock-Warbler), which go to form the walls of the gullies, at 

 the bottom of which the streams find their way to the waters of 

 Middle Harbour. These gullies are not very thickly timbered, 

 though, judging by the relics left by the timber-getters, some 

 " giants there were in those days," and there are still some fine 

 trees to be seen, but these gullies are quite unlike those, say, in 

 the Dandenong Ranges (Vic), and such as are in that State 

 associated with the haunt of the Lyre-Bird. 



The area covers many thousands of acres of country, and is so 

 vast, and the ramifications of the " arms " of the harbour so 

 intricate and numerous, that, though Sydney city is only half a 

 dozen miles away to the south, it is quite an easy thing for the 



