58 MATESHIP WITH BIRDS 



taining babies or deserted, only a crumb-like litter 

 remaining at the bottom of the nest to tell that the 

 brood has got safely out into the big world. 



For the most part, the birds still busy breeding 

 are those which build in well-shaded situations 

 (particularly the imported Goldfinch, Greenfinch, 

 Blackbird and Thrush) and species for whom the 

 heat of the sun holds no terrors. Some little Aus- 

 tralians enter into both of these categories. The 

 tiny Diamond-Birds, for instance, the Tree- 

 Creepers, the rainbow-hued Bee-eater, the Dollar- 

 Bird, and many of the Parrots all of these sun- 

 lovers are not only adaptable to dry conditions in 

 the matter of food, but they breed in hollows. And 

 so there is no call for any of them to sit with pro- 

 tecting wings outspread above a nest, as many less 

 intuitive parent-birds have to do, shading callow 

 nestlings from the menacing sun of November. A 

 friend writes me from the dry west of Queensland 

 that practically the only bird to be found breeding 

 there during the bad drought of 1919 was a species 

 of Tree-Creeper, young birds of which species were 

 a feature of the locality. 



The Brown Tree-Creeper, the "Wood-pecker" of 

 roving boys, and Climacterics scandens of the 

 ornithologist, is an old friend. One of the outstand- 

 ing recollections of boyish days in Birdland is that 

 of peering into a stump, hollow with age, for a 

 glimpse of three beautiful, pink-spotted eggs. (The 

 Tree-Creepers are among the few birds to break 

 the law under which birds which nest in hollows lay 

 white eggs.) Essentially faithful to a favorable 

 locality, the Brown Tree-Creeper will return year 



