BIRD-NOTES 55 



of the supporting leaf are visible in a double row^the 

 knotted ends of the silk threads which sling the nest 

 and serve to keep in position the skeleton leaves. A 

 nest such as this is not only pretty secure from observa- 

 tion but is well protected from snakes, those inveterate 

 destroyers of birds' eggs; moreover, the protective 

 covering of skeleton leaves keeps the nest from swinging 

 about, and there is no danger of the eggs being thrown 

 out, however violently the leaf to which the nest is 

 attached may wave in the breeze. 



Mr. Ridley (loc. cit., p. 87) describes the nest of 

 another Sunbird, Arachnothera modesta, as "made of 

 skeletons of leaves and fibres and bast, apparently from 

 the lining of a squirrel's nest, and bark, between two 

 leaves of these plants \Heliconia] t which had been 

 pegged together by bits of stick, by some person." I 

 have little doubt in my own mind that the "person" 

 who pegged the leaves together was the bird which 

 built the nest. 



Mr. Ridley also describes (p. 86) the nest of another 

 Sunbird, Anthothreptcs malacccnsis : " It makes a hanging 

 nest on the end of a bough, about six inches long, of 

 bark fibres and nests of caterpillars, and lined with 

 feathers. The nest is pear-shaped with a hole at the 

 side, and a kind of little eave is thrown out over it 

 to keep the rain from getting into the nest." I do not 

 exactly know what " caterpillars' nests " J are, unless 

 by this term the writer means the large communal 

 cocoons woven of silk and attached to tree-trunks by 

 the larvae of a Noctuid moth belonging to the genus 

 Hyblcea ; there is also a Pyralid moth which has 



1 They were large communal webs like those of Clisiocampa made 

 over bushes.- H. N. R. 



