The nest is formed of dried grasses and leaves, and is warmly lined with feathers. The breeding-season commences in September and lasts until January.
This species emits so strong an odour, that pointers and other game-dogs stand to it as they do to a quail, and that too at a considerable distance. It possesses a clear and pretty song, which it frequently pours forth while sitting on a bare twig, or the summit of a low bush or shrub among the thickets, to a part of which it dives on the least alarm.
The sexes are precisely similar in colour, and nearly so in size.
All the upper surface olive, with a broad mark of sooty black down the centre of each feather; wings sooty black, narrowly margined with olive; tail olive, all but the two centre feathers crossed near the tip by a broad band of sooty black; line over the eye white; throat greyish white; breast, abdomen and flanks deep buff, each feather of the throat, breast and flanks with a narrow line of sooty black down the centre; irides light sandy buff; bill and feet brownish flesh-colour.
The Plate represents two birds of the natural size; the beautiful rush on which they are figured is very abundant in the immediate vicinity of Hobart Town.
CALAMANTHUS CAMPESTRIS: Gould.
J. Gould and H. C. Richter del et lith. C. Hullmandel Imp.
CALAMANTHUS CAMPESTRIS.
Field Reed-Lark.
Praticola campestris, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., Part VIII. p. 171.
The Calamanthus campestris is a native of Southern and Western Australia, where it inhabits open plains and scrubby lands, particularly such as are interspersed with tufts of coarse grasses. It has never yet been discovered within the colony of New South Wales. Like its near ally of Van Diemen’s Land it is a rather shy and recluse species, running mouse-like over the ground among the herbage with its tail perfectly erect, and is not easily forced to fly, or even to quit the bush in which it has secreted itself.