The Wilderness 



even to so bold a fellow as the butcher-bird, have this habit of hiding 

 amongst the thickest leaves and soliloquizing, but none has a more 

 impassioned utterance than the little mistletoe-bird, though none has 

 so slender a song. 



Sometimes we find their nest, one of the most wonderfully built 

 of all birds' nests. It is woven from fine plant fibres and silky seeds, 

 and is hung from a slender twig, with a little* entrance at the side ; it 

 is very like a little purse of felt, save that it is not so harsh to the touch 

 as felt. 



One more of our visitors I must mention, and that is the native 

 canary, which comes each year, builds his little domed nest in a sapling, 



and fills the air with his 

 sweet song. Then there 

 are the everyday birds, the 

 dear, familiar things which 

 are with us all the year 

 found. Every gardener 

 knows them blue wrens 

 and tits, jacky winters and 

 yellow robins, redheads 

 and spinebills, peewees and kookaburras they are the usual 

 inhabitants of our suburban gardens, and dear to us all 

 because of their friendly, fearless ways. Other birds come and go, 

 but they stay with us all the time, building and breeding in the wilder- 

 ness each spring. In the two years that I have known this wild patch 

 I have counted seventy-two species of birds passing through. Some, 

 as I have said, are there all the time ; some come at certain seasons, 



Spine-billed Honeyeater 



18 



