A nest taken on the 4th of December contained two nearly hatched eggs; it was attached by the rim to a drooping branch of the swamp Melaleuca, about five feet from the ground; was very deep and large, and formed of very narrow strips of the paper bark mixed with a few small twigs, the bottom of the interior lined with very fine wiry twigs.
The eggs, which are large for the size of the bird, are of a beautiful bluish white, sparingly spotted all over with deep umber-brown and bluish grey, the latter appearing as if beneath the surface of the shell; their medium length is one inch and three lines long by eleven lines broad.
The sexes when fully adult differ so little in colour that they can scarcely be distinguished; the male is however of a more uniform tint about the head, neck and throat, and has the yellowish olive of the upper surface of a deeper tint than the female.
Head and all the upper surface yellowish olive; wings and tail-feathers dark brown; the outer webs of the coverts and secondaries grey, margined and broadly tipped with white; all but the two centre tail-feathers with a large oval-shaped spot of white on the inner, and the extremity of the outer web white, the white mark gradually increasing in size as the feathers recede from the centre until it becomes an inch long on the external one; under surface white, washed with olive-yellow on the sides of the chest, each feather with an elongated pear-shaped mark of black down the centre; bill dull flesh-red; irides scarlet; feet lead-colour.
The young bird during the first year has the bill blackish brown instead of dull flesh-red; the upper surface olive-brown, each feather strongly streaked down the centre with dark brown; wings brown; under surface of the shoulder and all the wing-feathers except the primaries margined with sandy red; the black streaks on the breast more decided, and the white spot at the tip of the lateral tail-feathers much smaller than in the adult.
The figures represent the two sexes of the natural size on a plant gathered in the brushes of New South Wales, the name of which I have not been able to ascertain.
ORIOLUS FLAVOCINCTUS.
J. Gould and H. C. Richter del et lith. Hullmandel & Walton Imp.
ORIOLUS FLAVOCINCTUS.
Crescent-marked Oriole.
Mimetes flavo-cinctus, King, Survey of Intertropical Coasts of Australia, vol. ii. p. 419.—Steph. Cont. of Shaw’s Gen. Zool., vol. xiv. p. 351.