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Rh out in pursuit of their prey as it hove in sight. These graceful little birds possess remarkably quick and clear vision, while their minute and delicate heaks may occasionally be distinctly heard snapping at their proy as they Hit near the ohserver.

When at Tirotiro-moana Valley, in Taranaki, on the 7th Angust, 1905, I observed a pair of fantails constructing a nest on a limb of tutu-shrub partly overhanging the road formed obliquely along the stoep east side of the valley. They were using mosses and lichens chiefly, ani, as with the pair studied by Mr. Douglas Park, the male was carrying the materials, while the female wove them expertly and neatly into the nest. for about two minutes during the half-lour I watched them the male assisted in placing and fixing the naterials it brought into the structure. They were working with great vivacity and vigour, meanwhile twitterny freely to each other. The female seemed to work fretfully, but with perfcet precision, and was a little fastidious in the sclection of the materials brought by her mate wherewith to build the best. They were working with great activity when I reluctantly left them.

When engaged preparing these notes I received an interesting letter from Mr. D). Sinclair, C.E., of Terrace Eud. Palmerston North, narrating a remarkable experience with a fantail's nest, which I have pleasure in reproducing here.

“While I was engineer for the Pohangina County Council," writes Mr. Sinclair, “I was using a slasher cutting a line through the hush. In doing 90 I cut a small branch of a rather bushy tawhara, which often grows on the side of a tree-fern. The branch fell from the slasher upside down, when I noticed a fantail's nest, and, to my surprise, found thai the bird was on the nest, and, although it was upside down, the bird was clinging so ten- aciously to the nest that it prevented the little eggs (four in number) from falling out. The little bird sat on the nest with its oyes closed, and seemed oblivious to the rough ordeal it was being subjected to. I lifted it partly off the nest to count the number of eggs, when it hustled itself down again in the post, saying in effect, if not in words, without sound or motion, Do what you will with me, I am going to stick to my nest.' Maternity seemed for the moment to outweigh all seusc of danger in the little fantail. carried it a little distance in the bush from where the line was being cut. and inserted the branch in an upright position in the trunk of another fern- tree, with the hope that the fearless little mother would be rewarded in due time with four little fantails."

To Dr. Park, jun., is due the honour of first observing and ascertaining precisely the respective time periods of nest-building, egg-laying, and hatch- ing of the native fantail fly-catcher, which constitutes a valuable addition to our knowledge of the habits of the species. Though these birds are still fairly mumerous, there is some probability of thein becoming rarer as the native bush disappears. In parts of the South Island they adapt them- selves to wholly altered conditions to those of the native bush during the winter months. On the approach of cold weather in the bush remaining in some of the valleys of the fore hills of other ranges in Canterbury the fantails migrate across the plains and live in the plantations and shubberies around the settlers' bornes, until the nesting instinct returns with the warmth of spring, when they again repair to the bush to nest for the season.

The nest of the native fantail ranks amongst the neatest and best-finishel of its class, and is an excellent model of bird-architectwe. A closer examination of the methods of lacing together the soft mosses, lichens, tivy leaves,