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Show 576 MR. RAMSAY ON THE FOSTERPARENTS OF CUCKOOS. [Dec. 13, ten in number, spends the most of its time on the ground, over which it hops with the greatest agility and ease, or may be found traversing the fences, logs, and fallen trees, peering into every crack and crevice in search of insects, spiders, and larvae of various kinds. On the Murrumbidgee River I found it in company with G. chry-sorrhous, which it closely resembles in habits and actions. A pair have built for a number of years in the side of a hollow branch of an old English oak, close to our residence at Dobroyde, and have frequently had the pleasure of rearing a young Bronze Cuckoo. Sometimes a second pair would take up a similar situation in a branch on the opposite side of the old oak tree. Little or no preference seems to be shown in the selection of a site for the nest. It is a dome-shaped structure, having a small entrance in the side, and composed of grasses and stringy bark, &c, lined with feathers, cotton-tree down, or " possum " fur. It is placed in a tuft of grass, or low bush, or low bushy shrub, but just as often among the loose pieces of bark which, having accumulated in the forks of the gum-trees (Eucalypti), hide all except the entrance of the nest. A hole morticed in the side of a post and the fork of a tea-tree where rubbish has accumulated alike serve its purpose, the shape depending upon the position chosen. The nests resemble those of the Malurus cyaneus both in size and shape ; they are, however, much more bulky, thicker, and have a great quantity of lining, which renders them much more warm and comfortable. The eggs, which may be taken from August to December, are four in number, -^5- or fa of an inch in length, by -fa or -fa broad, having a delicate white ground-colour, spotted, freckled, or dashed with markings of reddish brown of various tints, and a few of purplish lilac brown, in most forming a zone at the larger end ; the eggs of the young breeding for the first or second time are white without markings. This species has three broods during the season, and if the nest be taken will frequently build another in the same place. 6. WHITE-THROATED GERYGONE. Gerygone albogularis, Gould, Birds of Australia, ii. p. 97. This delicate little bird is only a summer visitant with us, arriving regularly in tolerable numbers every year during September, and remaining to breed, taking its departure again in March and April. Its arrival is at once made known by its soft and varied strain of considerable melody. From its song (not that it at all resembles the notes of any other bird), and partly on account of its yellow breast, it has gained the local name of the " Native Canary." Upon its arrival it betakes itself to the smaller trees and saplings, and almost at once commences to build, selecting some strong twig among the innermost boughs of a bushy tree, to which it suspends its oblong dome-shaped nest, the extremity of which terminates in a well-formed tail of about 3 inches in length, which is extremely characteristic. The body of the nest is in length from 6 to 8 inches, and 4 in breadth; it is composed of fine pieces of stringy bark and grasses closely inter- |
