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This bright-coloured bird is the southern representative of Clitonyx albicapilla. Its range is confined 
to the South Island, where it is quite as common as the preceding species formerly was in the North. 
A narrow neck of sea completely divides their natural habitat — a very curious and suggestive 
fact, inasmuch as this rule applies equally to several other representative species treated of in the 
present work. 
The habits of this bird are precisely similar to those of its northern ally ; but it is superior to 
the latter in size and in the richer colour of its plumage, while its notes are louder and its song more 
varied and musical. A flock of these Canary-like birds alarmed or excited, flitting about among the 
branches with much chirping clamour, and exhibiting the bright tints of their plumage, has a very 
pretty effect in the woods. Even under ordinary conditions it is very pleasing to watch their 
movements. Hopping from twig to twig, and calling to each other almost continuously in a short 
clear note, they pass quickly through the branches, moving the body deftly, first to one side then to 
the other, as they pry into every crevice for the insect food on which they live ; then, after re- 
maining stationary a few seconds, they utter a louder and more plaintive note and fly a few yards 
further to repeat these movements; and so on, all through the day, with never tiring persistence. 
Sometimes they may be seen hunting among the mosses and lichens that grow on the bark of old 
forest trees, on which occasions they will ascend the trunks in company, clinging to the hanging 
vines or any other projecting point, as they make their rapid search, and finally consorting together 
in the topmost branches. Their black eyes, in a setting of yellow plumage, have a pretty effect, 
and nothing seems to escape their close scrutiny. They love to move about in the thick foliage, 
indicating their presence when not chirping by an audible rustling of the green leaves. 
The discharge of a collector’s gun, the snapping of a stick under foot, or the cry of a wounded 
bird, will sometimes bring a flock of forty or fifty of these bright-coloured creatures into the branches 
overhead, where they move restlessly about, peering down and chirping with noisy din, as if in eager 
consultation. 
In all the specimens opened by me the stomach contained comminuted insect remains, chiefly 
those of minute coleoptera, and larvae of various kinds. 
A life-size drawing of this species, by Mitchell, appeared long ago in the ‘ Genera of Birds ; ’ 
but the attitude is unnatural, the bird being placed on the ground instead of a tree. The attitude 
in which Mr. Keulemans has depicted the bird is a highly characteristic one. 
On comparing the nest of this species with that of Clitonyx albicapilla , it appears to exhibit more 
care and finish in its general construction, although composed of the same materials. It is a round 
and compactly built structure, composed chiefly of mosses, felted together with spiders’ webs, and 
having the cup lined with fine grasses. In the specimen under examination there are a few feathers 
of the Tui and Barrakeet intermixed with the other materials. Mr. Potts has “ sometimes found it 
placed in the hollow trunk of a broad-leaf.” His son found a nest containing two young birds. It 
was built of moss, grass, and sheep’s wool, with a few feathers intermixed, and was placed in a cluster 
of young shoots on the side of a black birch, near a shepherd’s homestead. 
The eggs differ in colour from those of C. albicapilla, but the type is the same. They are ovoido- 
elliptical in form, measuring ’9 inch by -7 inch, although some specimens which I have examined 
were slightly smaller. They are of a uniform reddish cream-colour, minutely and faintly freckled 
over the entire surface with a darker tint, approaching to pale brown. In one of my specimens the 
entire surface is of a warm salmon-colour, without any freckled markings ; and another is minutely 
freckled and dotted with reddish brown, of which colour there are also some irregular smeared 
markings towards the smaller end. The last-mentioned specimen differs also from the typical form 
in being almost pear-shaped, with the thick end rather flattened, and measuring only *75 of an 
inch in length by -65 in breadth. 
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