I 3 I


ill finding a trace of mite or insect amongst this material, which

was in regular use for considerably over a twelvemonth. In both

places, the tump seemed to consist wholly and solely of strips of

bark, although a few strips from the perches must have been

there somewhere.


I have seen it stated, or have been told, that these birds

build a dome-shaped nest. Not in any case did my birds do so ;■

moreover, I cannot conceive it possible that a dome, however

nominal, could be constructed out of such limp material without

external support such as is usually present in some form or

another with the nests of the Rong-tailed Tit and the Common

Wren. Of the chawed bark, as used by the Rosy-faces, not a

single piece has sufficient strength to bear its own weight. The

nests were shallow cup shaped, with a lot of loose material

attached externally, much like those of a Redstart or Spotted

Flycatcher when placed on a ledge or beam.


When nesting, the female flies on to a young bough of a

growing tree, bites off—by passing her beak along sideways,

nipping away as she goes—a strip of bark some three or four

inches long, doubles it, by giving a nip about one third of its

length from one end until the two sides form an acute angle,

and tucks the piece, at the angle, under one or more of the

feathers of the lower back or upper tail coverts, leaving both

ends sticking out. This performance is repeated until some

half-dozen pieces have been hooked on, though the number

varies according to the time occupied in obtaining the bark ;

she then flies off in anxious haste to her nest. In my garden,

the bark was almost always taken, if obtainable, by the Rosy-face

from a Balsam Poplar (Populics balsamifera) ; the Madagascar

Rove-birds, by the way, preferred the Rime tree. Dr. Greene

recommends the Willow, a tree I have not tried ; but these busy

little fellows set a grand example to the British workman, for if

they cannot get what they like, they like what they can get, and

make the best of it. When on her nest, the female employs her

time in passing the strips of bark backwards and forwards

between her mandibles, mumbling away at them until they are

beautifully soft and nice.


However much the iustiudts of my Rosy-faces may have

been sharpened by the enemies surrounding them, the anxiety

they betrayed to find a nesting-place secure from attack—a large

hole with a tiny entrance such as a rat would seledt—was so

marked, and the search so thorough and prolonged, in each case

the hole found having been previously unknown to me, that it

could hardly have been exceptional, but seemed rather a natural



