Mr. T. Carter on some 
68 
[Ibis, 
that it was the head of a bird, so I shot at it with my 
*410 gun, and it disappeared in the hole. Upon climbing 
the tree I found that it was hollow nearly down to the 
ground, and, thrusting my arm in, could feel a bird flut¬ 
tering upwards into the upper part of the trunk, which 
was also hollow. I then withdrew my arm, plugged the 
hole with my cap, aud from the ground carefully examined 
the lower part of the tree, and through a crevice was 
fortunate enough to catch sight of the extended wing of 
a bird, with a buff band across it, so knew I had got a 
Tree-Creeper at last. I then cut away the extremely hard 
wood from the edges of the crevice with my knife, until it 
was large enough to enable me to extract the dead bird, which 
was an undoubted fledgling of W. m. wellsi. I then plugged 
this hole, and also the larger one above, with bunches of dry 
grass, and withdrew some little distance to await the return of 
the parent birds, both of which I obtained in about five minutes; 
they were just commencing to moult. I then walked back 
to the station to obtain a small axe, and returning with 
it to the tree in the afternoon, cut the latter open, but could 
not find the other young bird. 
On the following day I saw another pair of the birds, and 
by watching them, located another nest, about twelve feet 
from the ground, in a crevice formed by a split in the main 
fork of a large, dead Jam tree. The nest was simply a large 
handful of sheeps’ wool, laid on chips of wood, about 
eighteen inches from the top of the crevice. It contained 
two young birds, about half-grown. No wool was seen in 
the first tree that I cut open the previous day. I saw several 
other adult birds in the next two days of my visit, but found 
no more nests, and was apparently too late for any eggs, 
but have no doubt myself that the egg obtained in 1900 
was the egg of this new subspecies, which is the only 
Tree-Creeper found in that area. In habits these birds 
much resemble W. r. rufa, often feeding on the ground, 
on fallen trunks and branches of trees laid on the ground, 
as well as on the trunks of standing trees. 
