THE TAILOR-BIRD. 



Tailor-bird is in build very like our English wren, and were 

 it brown, instead of green above and white below, might 

 pass for one with a hasty observer, especially as its habits 

 are very similar ; it is generally solitary, and equally 

 lively on its legs when hopping on bush or lawn, and weak 

 on the wing when it trusts itself to flight. Like ' ' Jenny," 

 too, our sartorial artist is insectivorous, and will tackle 

 insects of good size, though he relies on his bill alone to 

 manipulate them. This makes it the more remarkable 

 that he is able to build the wonderful nest which gives him 

 his name and his reputation. A bird which puts its foot 

 to a thing, as the even more clever weaver-bird does, has a 

 great advantage over one which has but one instrument to 

 work with. But probably both of the tailors work at 

 their wonderful structure, which is simply a big living leaf, 

 or several, actually sewn into a rough bag for the reception 

 of the inner nest, with silk or fibre somehow procured by 

 the bird, passed through holes bored in the leaves by its 

 slender bill, and finished off at the end with what is said to 

 be a knot. The nests vary very much in construction as 

 far as the details of tailoring are concerned ; there may be, 

 as above implied, one leaf or many pressed into the service, 

 and the thread may be of cobweb, cocoon-silk, vegetable 

 fibre, or real sewing- thread pilfered from a verandah ; for 

 the Tailor-bird is one of the most familiar of our birds, and 

 is to be seen even in town, tamely hopping about pot- 

 plants a few feet from a room. 



Nevertheless, though broods have been often brought 

 off in the Museum compound, I have never seen the nest 

 in situ, and it is naturally not easy to find. There is a 



