110 



As I have previously pointed out, in a communication to the Wellington Philosophical 

 Society (November 12, 1870), among the substances used as building-materials by this bird, 

 spiders' nests are always conspicuous ; indeed, in some specimens, the whole exterior surface is 

 covered with them. The particular web chosen for this purpose is an adhesive cocoon of loose 

 texture and of a dull green colour. These spiders' nests contain a cluster of flesh-coloured eggs 

 or young ; and in tearing them off the bird necessarily exposes the contents, which it eagerly 

 devours. Thus, while engaged in collecting the requisite building-material, it finds also a plen- 

 tiful supply of food — an economy of time and labour very necessary to a bird that requires to 

 build a nest fully ten times its own size, and to rear a foster-brood of hungry Cuckoos in addition 

 to its own. Dry freshwater alga? are sometimes used for binding the exterior and giving addi- 

 tional firmness to the structure. 



In the Canterbury Museum there is a beautiful nest of this species, composed almost wholly 

 of sheeps' wool intermixed with soft dry leaves. It is almost globular in shape, with the entrance 

 near the top, and is lightly suspended from a branch of Leptospermum. There is also another 

 of much larger size, composed of wool and spiders' nests, with fragments of cotton and twine 

 carefully interwoven, and furnished with a hoodless vestibule or porch, composed of fibrous root- 

 lets. The threshold is unusually deep and firm, probably because of the very yielding materials 

 of which the nest is constructed. 



Mr. Potts, in his interesting paper on the nests and eggs of New-Zealand birds*, states that 

 this species usually lays six eggs ; but, so far as my experience goes, four is the normal number, 

 although there are sometimes more. They differ somewhat in size, and vary in shape from the 

 true ovato-conical to a slightly pyriform type. They are sometimes pure white, but more gene- 

 rally freckled and marked with purplish brown, and are so fragile in texture as to bear only the 

 most delicate handling. Ordinary specimens measure - 7 of an inch in length by - 5 in breadth. 

 I have remarked that among the highly variable eggs of this species several distinct types may be 

 recognized, and that all the eggs in one nest are invariably alike. Thus there is the spotted 

 variety, in which the whole surface is studded with scattered dots of purplish brown ; secondly, 

 the freckled variety, in which the coloration is more diffuse ; and, thirdly, the zoned variety, pre- 

 senting a broad zone of colour near the thick end. Two examples, taken from a nest which 

 contained also an egg of the Shining Cuckoo, had the thick end broadly capped with reddish 

 brown. 



. * Trans. New-Zealand Inst. 1869, vol. ii. p. 50. 



