SINGING HONEYEATER 339 
have seen as many as four nests in one small ti-tree, 
in "various stages of dilapidation. The nest is placed 
either in the thick boughs of a grey-leaved shrub 
which grows in depressions in the coast sandhills, 
or else near the top of a ti-tree, usually one on the 
seaward side of a clump. The height varies from 
5 to 10 feet from the ground. The nest is cup-shaped, 
but widens more abruptly than do most Honey- 
eaters'; it is built of longish stalks of grass, and is 
elastic in texture. Ornamented with a few white 
cocoons on the outside, it is lined usually with seed- 
down. 
The eggs are usually three, of a pale salmon-pink 
with a very few minute spots of red. 
WHITE-EARED HONEYEATER 
Nesoptilotis leucotis melanodera 
This is to be classed among the handsomer of the 
Honeyeaters. It is olive-green above, yellowish 
olive below, with throat and chest black, and a patch 
of beautiful silvery-white on each side of the head 
at the ear. It would be impossible to mistake it for 
any other bird. 
Very clear is the remembrance of my first view of 
these birds. It was early in the summer of 1888, 
but quite a hot day (were the summers really hotter 
in one's boyhood ?), and the locusts rattled shrill and 
incessant from the tops of drooping gums by the 
sandy Swan Bay Road as I left Marcus Hill Station 
