"Nov., 1928 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
99 
stroy the single egg, or drown the young bird. But 
Nature does not make mistakes of this kind, and has 
endowed the birds with brains or instinct to overcome 
the difficulty. The only suitable breeding hollows are 
to be found in the large Bloodwood (Eucalyptus) or 
Melaleuca trees growing in forest country. In preparing 
the nesting hollow, the birds repair to the nearest scrub, 
in some instances from half a mile to a mile away. Here 
they select a straight bough about eighteen inches in 
length by one inch in diameter. This is soon cut through 
with their powerful beaks. Then holding the stick near 
the centre, with the beak, they fly to the hollow, ancl 
drop the stick inside ; then climb down and reduce it to 
splinters from three to six inches in length. The perform- 
ance is repeated till a platform is raised from six to eight 
inches high. On this the egg is laid, and so the egg and 
young bird are kept off the wet bottom of the hollow. 
The reason the birds select “scrub” timber is on account 
ot it being much softer and more easily reduced to splin- 
ters thah the hardwoods of the forest. 
You all probably know that pest, the introduced- star- 
ling. Well, we also have a starling in Queensland, and a 
far more interesting one than the introduced bird. This 
bird (Calornis metallica), also known as the weaver 
bird, crosses from New Guinea during the months of 
September and October, and spreads over the whole of 
the scrubs of northern Queensland. The birds congregate 
in flocks of many hundreds, and have a habit of rising- 
in the air like a cloud, then whirling with incredible 
speed, dash through the tree tops; and yet I have never 
seen a single bird injured while doing so. How they 
escape colliding with each other and the trees is a marvel. 
In nesting they select a large tree, either in scrub or 
forest, and construct their nests of vine tendrils woven 
and matted together in great bunches. So great does the 
weight become, the branches often break, and many eggs 
broken and young birds killed. I have counted as many 
as three hundred nests in a single tree. Their food con- 
sists chiefly of berries, and it shows how bountiful Nature 
is, when the scrubs can produce sufficient to keep such 
enormous numbers of birds in food. When nesting they 
are very noisy, and one can easily locate a nesting tree 
by the noise. Care should be taken not to stand under a 
nesting tree, as these birds become grossly infested by a 
minute red parasite commonly known as “scrub itch,” 
and anyone standing under a nesting tree is in for a bad 
