BLUE WREN 
287 
it is domed ; almost always the eggs are visible from 
above, and sometimes the opening seems to be right 
at the top. With the qualification that it is never 
built more than 3 or 4 feet from the ground, I 
would say that you can expect to find it in any kind 
of thick bush or herbage. The first I ever found 
was in September, 1885, in an acacia hedge (set low 
down and well into the centre among dead thorny 
branchlets — a favourite position) ; the last, in October, 
1912, was in some heathy plant almost on the ground. 
I have seen nests in gooseberry bushes, lilac shrubs, 
rosemary, box thorn, ti-tree, and a dozen different 
kinds of native bushes. 
The eggs are three, rarely four, varying greatly in size. 
They are white, with a ring of red spots slightly above 
the middle. Frequently, one egg has larger spots than 
the rest, and those distributed evenly over the surface. 
The Blue Wren is entirely insectivorous. It has a 
rich, hurried little song, and while it is flying from one 
bush to another, which it does with a very rapid wing- 
motion and tail carried straight out behind it, it 
twitters continuously. 
Mr. Mulder notes that the male sometimes breeds 
before attaining the full adult plumage. 
EMU WREN 
Stipiturus malachurus tregellasi 
There are perhaps half a dozen well-defined areas 
in this district where one may still meet with the 
