SORDID WOOD-SWALLOW 297 
essential being a secure base as a protection for such 
a frail structure from the wind. This seems to me 
characteristic of the leisurely resident as compared 
with the hurried nesting of the other two species, 
which, though their nests are much frailer, being 
built in a quarter of the time, yet display no care 
whatever in finding sites, but place them, as if at 
haphazard, on anything that will hold for the time. 
The Sordid Wood-swallow's favourite site is a niche 
in the side of a burnt stump ; at other times they 
will build up the nest in the split stem of a gum, 
sometimes for a height of a foot or more, till they are 
satisfied with their foundations. Again, the space 
between a loose (but not too loose) piece of bark and 
the trunk is utilised. At Merrijig Creek I once found 
a nest placed right on top of a fence-post, the wood 
having rotted just sufiiciently to form a shallow 
depression. At Batesford I have seen a nest in a 
prickly hakea bush. 
The eggs number three or, rarely, four ; and are 
very different from the heavily-blotched brownish 
eggs of the other species, being creamy-white with a 
beautiful thick ring of brown, red, purple, and lilac 
spots slightly above the centre. 
As to distribution, the Sordid Wood-swallow is 
universal, and shows no signs of losing ground. A 
few pairs nest in the Eastern Park, and I know no 
piece of bushland where you will not be likely to 
meet it. It has rather a preference for plantations 
of blue gums, on the one hand, and on the oth^r 
