THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
and are most destructive to fruit, especially apples. A fruit grower at 
Houghton killed a large number in 1908 by poisoning the fruit with strychnine; 
he gathered over one thousand, which shows how numerous they are at 
times. Although consistently hunted for, I know of one nest only having been 
found ; this was at Mount Pleasant in 1907.” 
Mr. Frank Howe’s notes read : “ At Bacchus Marsh (Viet.) during October 
1904, Mr. F. P. Godfrey, C. F. Belcher and myself found this honey-sucking 
Lorikeet breeding in the tall green box and white gums. The nesting-site in 
each case was in a green spout containing two young, and one young and one 
addled egg respectively. I consider this bird to be fastest on the wing of all 
Victorian birds, and when they are flying in flocks (rarely above the height of 
the timber) you can hear the whirr of their wings long before they reach you, 
and as they flash by they are indeed hard to see, so swift is the pace. As they 
‘ pitch ’ in the trees they invariably alight on a perpendicular bough, then 
fly on to a horizontal limb and walk out to the blossoms. The call note is a 
single note in the crescendo and fairly high pitched, and when feeding they 
utter a much lower and more tremulous note. One may always tell when 
they are about to leave a tree, as they utter the last call a few times quickly 
and it seems to have a higher intonation, then c whirr-r-r-r ’ away goes the 
flock. This is characteristic of the genus.” 
Though I recently indicated a sub specific form of this species, I do not 
here recognise it, as owing to the migratory habits of the species the differences 
cannot be determined exactly. Thus, the Tasmanian form may be correctly 
limited when only breeding birds are examined, but present collections 
contain visitors and thus are comparatively valueless. Gould concluded: 
“ It is stationary in New South Wales, but I am not certain that it is so 
in the more southern country of Tasmania.” 
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