THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
to its branches,” and later. Captain S. A. White has sent me the following 
note : “I have met with the Flowerpecker in every state I have visited; 
they seem to be found wherever the mistletoe ( Loranthus) is found and the 
berries of this parasitical plant seem to be their cliief food, although I have 
found insects just swallowed by tliis bird. The Mistletoe-Bird shifts about 
according to food supply and when the species of Loranthus has finished 
fruiting they move off to another district where another variety is in fruit. 
The note is a loud and sharp one for so small a bird. I have found them 
nesting in South Australia in September and October, and their beautiful 
purse-like nest is generally placed in a sapling not far from the ground. They 
will feed upon the pepper-tree berries.” 
Mr. Thos. P. Austin has sent me from Cobbora, New South Wales: “ Is 
fairly numerous throughout the whole district, but more plentiful in the 
heavier timbered forests and thick scrubs. Usually met with in pairs, but 
sometimes small flocks of about half a dozen may be seen flitting about the 
same tree. The males are rather pugnacious and will chase each other, or 
even the females, from tree to tree, darting and twisting about through the 
branches, sometimes near the ground, or even high in the air. Seldom are 
they still for long, and even when perched they often have a tremulous 
motion of their wings. The nest is a pear-shaped, somewiiat purse-like 
structure, usually suspended from a single twig in a sapling, composed of 
cobwebs and vegetation down, covered with the decaying saw r dust-like 
substance ejected from timber by wood-boring beetles and often the fallen 
half-dead w r attle blooms, all wonderfully woven together in such a manner 
as to form a sort of an elastic felt. The entrance is a long-shaped oval slit, 
which widens out as the bird enters to almost close again when she is inside. 
It is funny to see a bird entering a nest and, once inside, the nest stretches 
out with every movement of the bird. The clutch is usually three, and I have * 
examined nests containing eggs from September 15th till end of November.” 
Mr. Tom Carter has written me: “ The Flow r erpecker was seen 
occasionally, in the scattered bushes growdng on the North-west Cape ranges, 
and sometimes in Mangroves in that vicinity, but w r ere never numerous. The 
only other locality in which I saw r them was in thick scrubby country around 
Mullew r a on the Murchison railway.” 
Mr. J. P. Rogers’ notes read: “ Both at Marngle Creek and Mungi tliis 
species was found to be thinly distributed. In fact it is found all over West 
Kimberley, but I have never found it very numerous anywhere. In some 
of the gorges of the Grand Ranges where there are many mistletoes growing 
on a species of broad-leaved wrattle I have seen more of these birds than in 
any other locality. At Cooper’s Creek, Melville Island, Nov. 20th, 1911, very 
178 
