OPEN NESTS 201 



but three and a quarter inches. Yet another 

 Australian species, the Broad - billed Flycatcher 

 {Myiagra latirostris), makes an open nest often in a 

 mangrove tree overhanging a deep stream. In some 

 genera the architecture is remarkably uniform. Thus 

 the Fan-tailed Flycatchers {Rhipidura) are distributed 

 over the Oriental and Australian regions in a large 

 number of species. The nests are delicate little cups, 

 saddled on to horizontal branches (often dead boughs 

 in very exposed situations). The external materials, 

 which are closely interwoven or felted, and bound 

 together with spiders' webs, the latter in some cases 

 covering the outside of the nest, consist of various fibres 

 and dead grass leaves, the lining of finer grasses and 

 fibres. Then in the genera Zeocephus and Hypothy- 

 mis we have cup-shaped nests of moss felted together 

 with spiders' webs, and lined with fibres of different 

 fine kinds, and placed in forking branches in the 

 lower growths of vegetation in forests. In Muscica- 

 pula the nest is sometimes very slight, composed of 

 roots, and lined with broad leaves. In Terpsiphone 

 the nest is often delicately fashioned of moss lined 

 with hair, and placed in some low fork of a small tree 

 in the densest parts of the tropical forests. 



Many of the nests of the Swallows (Hirundinids) 

 are shallow, open, and saucer-shaped, composed of 

 mud, straws, and lined with grass, feathers, and so 

 forth, but as they are invariably more or less con- 

 cealed in covered sites, it will not be necessary to 



