THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
sheltered and bushy place in a mass of vines, bush or tree, and placed from 6 to 
20 feet or so from the ground ; and generally in a scrubby place where timber and 
vegetation is dense. 
Breeding season. September to January. 
Oft of six “ species ” of Colluricincla sensu lato known to him Gould 
described five himself, and of one of the most distinct he wrote (apparently 
half dismayed at his own audacity) : “I assigned this name to a bird sent 
to me by the late F. Strange from the brushes of the Clarence in New South 
Wales ; it may hereafter prove to be identical with the last mentioned 
species, C . parvula, the form and admeasurements being precisely the same ; 
but the bird from New South Wales has a lighter coloured bill, and the whole 
of the under-surface washed with deep rufous. Strange informed me that 
the bird ‘ is tolerably common in the brushes skirting the lower part of the 
Clarence and Richmond rivers, 5 but I never saw it out of the brushes or on the 
ground, as you may C. harmonica and the other species of the genus. It 
imitates the note of Ptilonorhynchus holosericeus so exactly that I have often 
been deceived by it. You mostly meet with the bird amongst the vines 
and supplejacks trailing over a few stunted trees ; here it will be seen hopping 
up the thick limbs in search of food just after the manner of the members 
of the genus Climacteris ; like them too, they are continually on the move.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor has written me: “ I came across tins species while 
on the Tweed River in New South W T ales ; the birds were fairly distributed 
throughout the scrub along the course of the stream right from its source 
near Mount Warning to the mouth near the boundary fine between New 
South Wales and Queensland. In the latter state I met with it on several 
occasions. It searches about in the thickets, securing its insect food among 
the decaying leaves, etc.” 
Ramsay wrote from Rockingham Bay, Queensland : “ It is one of 
the most common birds on the Herbert River, and has a very pleasing and 
varied note, imitating and mocking almost every bird it hears. It is lively 
and graceful in all its actions, the first up in the morning and the last to 
roost at night ; the scrubs resound with its pleasing song.” 
Macgillivray and Barnard record it as common at Cape York, but no 
field notes are given. 
Gould had described Ms Colluricincla rufigaster when Gray received 
collections of birds from the Aru Islands to examine. C. rufigaster had been 
named from the Clarence River, New South Wales, and that locality was 
quite a long way away, with also a different faunula from the Aru Islands. 
Gray compared the Aru Island representative of a Colluricincloid facies with 
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