80 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
poplars. The interior is composed of very finely 
shredded kanuka bark, the edges of the nest as 
trim and tidy almost as those of the Chaffinch. 
Nests are placed in a variety of sites: sometimes 
deep in the dense mass of twig and small pliable 
branchlet, dead or green, that darken the interior 
of the solitary young kanuka-trees of ten and 
fifteen feet; sometimes at similar heights in 
groups of the same species. Oftenest, however, 
woven with web and fibre into suitable forks 
and branch junctions, they are placed high among 
the naked, rough-barked, wind-blown thickets. 
The nest already spoken of as possibly owned 
by only two birds and containing only two eggs 
was situated but four feet from the ground. It 
was built into the interior of an outlying kanuka, 
young and dense. Another nest, run by four birds, 
was also low to the ground, not more than six 
feet from the boulders; it too was placed in a 
mass of dense, dead, and green shrubbery. Per- 
haps the better to blend with pendent lichen and 
loosely hanging bark, a sort of tail or beard is 
sometimes a feature of the nest. The eggs are 
white, sprinkled and peppered with brown. The 
newly hatched young are in the beginning fed 
on crushed insects, and when rather older on 
small moths. 
Whiteheads are much troubled with parasites, 
the old birds constantly searching their feathers 
