Vol. XIL 

 1913 



] Stray Feathers. 28 1 



while in the last case the egg of the Cuckoo had been placed in 

 the nest before building was complete, and had been covered 

 with the lining. Two eggs were found in a nest of the Little 

 Field-Lark {Chthonicola sagittata), one belonging to the Lark and 

 the other to a Narrow-billed Bronze-Cuckoo, and the last- 

 mentioned species also deposited eggs in nests of the Blue Wren 

 [Malurits cyaneiis), three cases being noticed. One Sunday 

 we watched a Brown Flycatcher (Micrceca fascinans) building its 

 nest. A week later the nest contained an egg of the Pallid 

 Cuckoo, which had been broken, probably by the Flycatchers. 

 The Bronze-Cuckoos favoured the Tits — Acanthiza chrysorrhoa, 

 A. lineata, and A. pusilla. On three separate occasions we found 

 two eggs of the Bronze-Cuckoo in a nest of the Yellow-rumped 

 Tit, and in one instance we discovered a nest of the Brown Tit 

 containing three eggs — one of the Tit, one of the Fan-tailed 

 Cuckoo, and one of the Bronze-Cuckoo. That we are able to 

 record four cases in each of which two Cuckoos' eggs were in the 

 same nest is, I think, abundant evidence that the Cuckoos, lately, 

 have been far more numerous than usual. — J. A. Ross. Melbourne. 



Megapode Mounds and Pits. — During several years the intense 

 industry of the Scrub-Fowl {Megapodius tumnhis) has afforded 

 continual entertainment. Of course, this sturdy dweller of the 

 jungle scratches that he may live, and makes mounds of leaves 

 and decaying wood and loam because the genius of the species 

 dictates a method of incubation " ages ahead of the fashion" of 

 less brainy birds. Given the inevitable duty of scratching for its 

 food, and the brilliant idea of utilizing chemical heat rather than 

 the heat of its own body for the hatching of its eggs, and the toil 

 such a scheme involves, still there remains to the bird the credit of 

 remarkable achievements, which from the human standpoint have 

 little to do with either the obtaining of food or obedience to the 

 second law of nature. 



The bird has developed such pedal capability and such mental 

 artfulness that the construction of mounds appears to be a mere 

 pastime. It may, therefore, indulge in merely fanciful operations, 

 to play with the materials it uses for the most serious of its 

 functions, and chuckle contentedly while it plays. 



As is well known, the Scrub-Fowl seldom leaves mother earth, 

 and then only on short, bustling, laboured flights. Its diet, 

 generally, is not of things of the air and light, but of the moist 

 earth of the dim-lit jungle. Grubs, beetles, worms, the pupae of 

 ants, young snakes, centipedes, millepedes, scorpions, and other 

 creatures for which the average man has no particular liking, are 

 eagerly devoured. The search for such food involves the shifting 

 of much of the rubbish of the jungle floor, so that you may come 

 across wide spaces over which the roots of trees have been laid 

 bare and the stones and decaying wood tossed aside. 



Almost without exception the incubating mounds are located in 



