Page:The Emu volume 9.djvu/277

 egg was infertile, and offensive when blown, though the other two were quite fresh.

The call note of this species is rather shrill and somewhat stridulant.

(Lacustroica whitei, North).—This little bird has only recently been described as new by Mr. A. J. North, from a series of skins I secured near Wiluna and Milly Pool. It is sufficiently distinct to require a new genus for its reception. It is described as belonging to the Honey-eaters. If this is the case, then as a field naturalist I should place it next to Zosterops, to which it has a superficial resemblance, and also some similarity in general behaviour and in its notes. In possessing a dark bar near the tip of the tail, and in certain other features, it shows a divergence. (See coloured plate.)

At Lake Austin, in 1903, I shot a pair of small birds I could not identify. Speaking from memory, I think they were identical with the present species. They were sent down to the Perth Museum with other skins, but I never learned to what species they had been referred.

This little Honey-eater is confined to tracts of country where large mulga and other tree-like bushes are growing. It does not seem to favour eucalypts, but I have seen it amongst flowering acacias. It is a very difficult bird to pick out from a party of Acanthizæ, busy, like itself, in searching the foliage for insect prey. It looks slightly larger than the three local species of Tits, but in its attitudes and its perpetual motion there is absolutely nothing to distinguish it from these commoner birds. The notes are altogether the best guide. They are rather difficult to describe on paper. They may, perhaps, be described as a succession of five or six monotones, high pitched but musical, and uttered in a rapid, sibilant manner. Each bar is repeated several times, to be followed by an interval before the next cadence is commenced. Certain other notes resemble those of Anthus australis when engaged in a love-flight, but the volume of sound produced is much less and the tone shriller. Others, again, resemble those of the Carter Desert-Bird, which in their turn somewhat resemble the before-mentioned notes of Anthus. In the generally high-pitched voice, and to a lesser degree the manner of utterance, I was reminded of the notes of Zosterops lutea and Z. gouldi.

After shooting a male soon after my arrival in Wiluna, I came across a pair on 23rd July, which I resolved to watch. They were within easy distance of the main street of Wiluna, and my chances of securing nest and eggs were not enhanced thereby. Further observations showed them to be busy at the extremity of a horizontal branch of a narrow-leaved mulga or kindred tree. Both birds were at work, and I waited till both were away before making a closer examination. A nest was evidently just being commenced, as I could plainly see spiders' webs had been attached to the branch of the tree where the birds had been working. Progress was very slow, and I shortly left Wiluna for Bore Well, not returning until the 15th August. On returning from the latter locality I called en route at several nests I was watching, only to find them pulled out by the blacks. It was with some trepidation I visited my "Gerygone" nest, as I then called it. Tracks of blacks' feet were only too plentiful, and I hardly expected to find the nest safe. Judge of my delight when I could see the frail little structure quite intact, and with the tail of the sitting bird projecting over the side. I could just reach the branch. Cautiously bending it down, I peeped in. There were two remarkably large eggs for so small a bird, with the glow of the yolks shining through