THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
often this is the only bird to be found in the vast Mulga scrubs of the interior, 
and one would hardly know they were there if it were not that now and again 
one would flit down from a bough like a spark to the ground, pick up some 
insect food and up again. I have found them over the whole of Central 
Australia, not numerous in any one spot, but thinly scattered over the whole 
country. The nest is like that of other members of the family, but smaller, 
nearly always placed on a horizontal branch, sometimes in a fork; it is a 
lovely construction of moss and grass warmly lined with opossum or rabbit-fur. 
The male bird feeds the female on the nest. The young male is very like the 
female when it leaves the nest. Insects form the whole of this bird’s food.” 
Mr. F. E. Howe has written me : “I have met this beautiful little creature 
far afield in the Mallee, where it is very plentiful. At Murtoa, September 
13th, 1907, I found a nest ready for eggs and on visiting the locality on the 
23rd I was astonished to see that they had pulled the nest to pieces, not leaving 
a vestige of it remaining and had rebuilt it high up in a pine tree fully 
eighty yards distant. The female was sitting on a full set of three eggs that 
just showed signs of incubation. At Pine Plains they were breeding freely, 
and had in a good many cases hatched out the young ; both parents were 
noticed to feed them.” 
Berney, writing from North Queensland, stated : “ This showy little 
Robin was here through the winters of 1903 and 1904, but I did not see them at 
any time during 1902 ; they showed up suddenly at the end of January this 
year (1905) and have been with us in considerable numbers ever since.” 
Mr. Thos. P. Austin’s note reads : “ The Red-capped Robin is a very 
common species throughout this district in favourable situations, where it is 
to be found the whole year, having a preference for sapling country, where it 
is to be met with mostly in pairs, but it is also seen in the open pine scrubs 
and but seldom in the open forests of large timber. Rather a restless little 
creature, seldom remaining still for any length of time, and even when perched 
it has a habit of repeatedly, slightly but very quickly, flipping its wings. Usually 
seen perched low down on a dead twig, with head on one side, or looking over 
its shoulder, apparently intently watching some insect upon the ground, then 
it will suddenly dart off, and pick up some morsel of food, in quite the contrary 
direction to that which it appeared to be watching. They breed here in great 
numbers, and I have seen nests containing eggs from the last week in August 
till November, and I think they rear more than one brood in a season. The 
males sometimes breed in immature plumage.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby’s observations read : “I found the Red-capped Robin 
common at Dongara about two hundred miles north of Perth, West Australia, 
in 1888, frequenting the low acacia scrub of that locality, and the same year I 
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