THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
orange-chestnut on the hinder-face ; chin and throat white ; breast and abdomen 
white tinged with yellow ; sides of body drab-brown broadly streaked with white; 
under tail-coverts buffy-white with twin spots of dark brown ; axillaries and under 
wing-coverts whitish ; under-surface of flight-quills hair-brown with a whitish 
patch ; lower aspect of tail dark brown tipped with grey. Figured. Collected in 
South Australia. 
Eggs. Two to three eggs form the clutch, but three usually. A clutch of three eggs taken 
at Middle Harbour, Sydney, New South Wales, on the 9th of November, 1903, is 
white ground-colour, sparingly marked with rounded spots of reddish-brown and 
purplish-brown, which become more numerous about the larger end of each egg. 
Swollen ovals in shape ; surface of shell smooth and slightly glossy. 23-27 mm. 
by 16-17. Another clutch of three eggs, taken at Cobbora, New South Wales, on the 
5th of October, 1916, are very rounded specimens, and measure 20-21 nun. by 16-17. 
Nest. Is placed within a hollow r limb or trunk of a tree, the hollow being lined with bark, 
grass, fur, etc., and placed at heights varying from 5 to 40 feet up from the ground. 
Breeding-months. August to December (January). 
The early history of this species is somewhat complicated by the fact 
that two very distinct species were confused; at one time the names being 
even transposed, at others the two species being regarded as sexes of one species 
only. Otherwise, as with the Treerunners, Gould named nearly all the species 
we have. Thus, admitted that the species was first named by Latham, as 
detailed later in the technical portion of this essay, Temminck named two 
species and Swainson proposed a new name on the grounds that these were 
sexes only of one species. Gould transposed the scientific names and these 
have been continually confused ever since. 
Gould wrote : “ The range of this species is as widely extended as that 
of the (Brown Treecreeper), being a common bird in New South Wales and 
the intervening country, as far as South Australia; the precise limits of its 
habitat northward have not been ascertained, but it does not form part of the 
Fauna of Western Australia. The whole structure of this species is much 
more slender and Creeper-like than any other member of its genus, and I 
have observed that this difference of form has a corresponding influence over 
its habits, for they are more strictly arboreal than those of its congeners; 
indeed so much so, that it is questionable whether the bird ever descends to 
the ground. It also differs from the (Brown Treecreeper) in the character 
of country and land of trees it inhabits, being rarely seen on the large Eucalypti 
of the open forest lands, but resorting to trees bordering creeks as well as those 
on the mountains and the brushes. I have frequently seen it in the brushes 
of Illawarra and Maitland, in which localities the (Brown Treecreeper) is 
seldom if ever found. While traversing the trunks of trees in search of insects, 
which it does with great facility, it utters a shrill piping cry; in this cry, and 
indeed in the whole of its actions, it strikingly reminded me of the Common 
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