352 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
land music as any you may hear in that great chorus 
of the bush that awakes with the throbbing of spring. 
He is a good flier, too, an unusual quality in a 
Honeyeater, reminding one, by his alternate wing- 
strokes and glides, of the flight of the Graucalus. In 
February and March one may see small companies 
of Wattle-birds, ten to twenty birds in each, passing 
over the town in what almost looks like a migration. 
It is, however, that the gums have done flowering 
where the birds have been, and they seek fresh fields. 
The Wattle-bird is found throughout the district, 
in the same classes of country as the Minah — that is, 
patches of fairly open woodland. During the autumn 
and winter it concentrates in spots where the honey 
on which it feeds is plentiful. Paired by the end of 
July, the birds nest in mid-August. I once knew 
a pair make a third nest and lay a third pair of eggs 
after the former two had been robbed, and I think 
it likely that at least two broods are regularly hatched. 
I have found eggs as late as December. 
The nest is larger than any other Honeyeater's and 
is composed of a rough outer frame of thin dried 
eucalyptus twigs, lined with grass, strips of bark, and 
rabbits' fur. It is firmly fixed in a fork of a tree, 
usually a gum sapling, at a height of about 12 feet 
from the ground. In the Eastern Park I once saw a 
nest in a cypress-pine tree. 
The eggs are of a reddish ground-colour, marked 
with chestnut and brown spots, usually in the form 
of a broken ring about the larger end. 
