82 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
found on a strip of bush edge of nine or ten hun- 
dred yards. In this forest fringe, I believe, we 
located perhaps five lots of Whiteheads, each with 
a range of one hundred yards or so on either 
side. In this district the eggs of the Whitehead 
hatch late in November. One nest only, with 
young in it, was discovered. Watched from be- 
neath there were no signs of more than two birds 
in attendance. As on Little Barrier, it was only 
apprehension of injury to the precious nestlings 
that assembled the four old birds. 
My intention of obtaining the quartette on one 
plate, even if a faulty plate, was unfortunately 
frustrated by heavy, continuous, cold rain, which 
drowned the young. The Hawke’s Bay nests 
were peculiarly picturesque structures, their ex- 
teriors roughed all over with curly, crisp, green 
moss of one particular sort. For preference these 
verdant ball-baskets were airily slung amongst 
loose trails of the smaller bush lawyer, the kind 
that tears the hands and face with innumerable 
minute cuts, and whose jagged teeth may well 
be supposed to baffle the approach of the Black 
Rat. The bases of these nests were in all cases 
solid and substantial, their interiors made soft and 
warm with pappus of clematis and bits of lace- 
bark, but chiefly with frayed, brown, dead bark 
of kaiku. The edges were firmly bound, almost 
