94 
MacGILLIVI\AY, S.W. Queensland. [?4 oT 
Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters, Greenies, Singing Iioneyeaters and 
Galahs. We went up the creek again on the following morning. 
A Greenie had her neat little nest in a bunch of Mistletoe ( Lor - 
anthus pendulus) growing on a Gidgee. The nest contained 
a pair of lledglings whose skin was yellowish, gape yellow, legs 
slaty, with grey down on the head, back, and humeral and femoral 
feather tracts ( pterylae ). More Allied Wrens were seen, a 
nest of the Sparrowhawk, empty on the previous evening, was 
now found to contain one egg. This open nest was only twenty 
feet up in a Gidgee, and was built of fine dry twigs, lined with 
green leaves. The diameter over all was one foot; egg cavity, 
6 inches; external depth, 10 inches; internal, 4 inches. The 
female flashed past later, when we were taking a photograph. 
Dr. Chenery by patient watching found a group of nests within 
30 yards of one another. The first was that of the White- 
browed Tree-creeper (Climactcris affinis) in a small hole three 
feet from .the ground, in a dead Gidgee. The nest contained 
young birds. Not far away was a nest of the Red-capped Robin, 
a beautifully hidden structure on a horizontal fork of Gidgee at 
a height of four feet. The hen bird allowed us to examine and 
photograph her on the nest without evincing the slightest fear. 
She was sitting on one egg. A third nest was the beautiful 
purse-like structure of the Mistletoe-bird suspended 12 feet up 
in the top branchlets of a young Gidgee. It contained two eggs 
and looked more like a mass of tangled cobwebs than a bird’s 
nest. The next nest was that of the Yellow-tailed Thornhill in 
a pendent Gidgee branchlet. It had the usual open nest at the 
top, one compartment that contained an egg of the Narrow¬ 
billed Bronze Cuckoo, and another newly-completed room con¬ 
structed by the birds to outwit the cuckoo after the latter had 
laid in their first compartment. 
Nearer our camp a Crested Pigeon was sitting on her nest in 
a bunch of Mistletoe parasitic on Acacia salicina. A White- 
browed Wood-Swallow’s nest with callow young was in a cleft 
of a stumpy Coolibah and within a few yards of it was a Willie 
Wagtail’s neat nest, low down in a small bushy Gidgee about two 
feet from the ground. The bird was sitting on four fresh eggs. 
Two nests of the Magpie-Lark ( Grallina ) were found low down 
over the water on horizontal limbs of Coolibah. One contained 
eggs and the other was receiving the finishing touches. Four 
Apostle-birds were busy building a nest in a Gidgee; some bring¬ 
ing mud gathered from the water’s edge, others fibre taken from 
the ground or torn from the bark of some dead limb. They 
seemed to work in perfect agreement, one waiting with material 
until another had completed her share before attempting to add 
her contribution. Out here we could not tell whether males or 
females were building, as the sexes were alike; but in my aviary 
the female of a pair did all the work, the male superintending, 
and giving advice or approval. 
