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lower part of back and rump olivaceous yellow, tinged with green ; tail-coverts dull green ; underparts 

 buffy white, washed on the sides with yellow; wing-feathers dusky, margined on the outer web and 

 marked at the base with olivaceous yellow ; superior wing-coverts black ; outer tertials margined with 

 white ; innermost secondary with an oblong spot of yellowish white on the outer vane ; tail-feathers 

 black, tipped with fulvous. 



Young. Plumage generally duller and suffused with yellowish brown ; marked on the breast with numerous 

 longitudinal spots of brown. 



Obs. Examples vary in the tone of their colouring ; and a specimen in my collection (received from the 

 South Island) has the rump and upper tail-coverts almost orange-coloured, without any mixture of 

 green. 



The Rifleman is the smallest of our New-Zealand birds ; and although comparatively common, 

 very little is at present known of its natural history. It is very generally distributed over the 

 middle and southern portions of the North Island, in all suitable localities, and throughout the 

 whole extent of the South Island. It is to be met with generally on the sides and summits of 

 the wooded ranges, seldom or never in the low gullies. Captain Hutton found it on the Great 

 Barrier, and was assured by the native residents of that island that it was a migratory bird, 

 coming and going with the Cuckoo ! 



In its habits it is lively and active, being incessantly on the move, uttering a low feeble cheep 

 (like the cry of a young bird), accompanied by a constant quivering of the wings. It is generally 

 to be seen running up the boles of the larger trees, often ascending spirally, prying into every 

 chink and crevice, and moving about with such celerity that it is rather difficult for the collector 

 to obtain a shot. Its powers of flight are very feeble, and it simply uses its wings for short pas- 

 sages from one tree to another. Its tail is extremely short, and is hardly visible when the bird 

 is in motion. 



The stomachs of all that I have opened contained numerous remains of minute insects, some- 

 times mixed with finely comminuted vegetable matter. 



It is of so excitable a nature that it may be decoyed into the open hand by rapidly twirling 

 a leaf, so as to simulate the fluttering of a bird, accompanied by an imitation of its simple note. 



Mr. Potts found a nest of this species, " very cleverly built, in a roll of bark that hung 

 suspended in a thicket of climbing convolvulus," and, at another time, in a small hole in the 

 trunk of a black birch. A bird-collector at Wellington showed me a brood of three young ones 

 which he had taken from a nest in the cavity of a hinau, at an elevation of 20 feet or more from 

 the ground. Finding the aperture too small to admit the hand, he cut into the tree about a foot 

 below it, and thus disclosed the nest, which he described as being composed entirely of fern-hair, 

 about 10 inches in length, and bottle-shaped, with a long vertical tube forming the entrance to it. 

 In the Canterbury Museum there is a nest of this species, which appears to have been torn out of 

 some natural cavity ; it is pear-shaped, with the entrance on the side and near the bottom, and 

 is very loosely constructed, the materials composing it being the skeletons of decayed leaves, the 

 why stems of plants, rootlets, and a few feathers. 



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