This little bird inhabits the brushes, as well as all humid situations
clothed with thick underwood, such as the sides of creeks, gullies, &c.
The locality in which it is most abundant is the south-eastern part of
Australia, where it is very numerous in all the dense forests which
stretch along the coast between Sydney and Moreton Bay, and I believe I
may safely state that its range does not extend westward of the 134th
degree of East longitude, beyond which a nearly-allied species is found;
the species, therefore, inosculate about Spencer’s and St. Vincent’s
Gulfs in South Australia. Like the other members of the genus this bird
generally bops about the bottoms of the brushes, selecting in preference
the most damp and humid parts, where rotten wood and moss-covered stones
afford some peculiar species of insect food, upon which it is destined
to live. All the members of this genus are very Wren-like in their
habits, actions, the kind of food they select, and in the structure of
their nest. The present is one of the smallest yet discovered, and was
always a favourite little bird with me, for in the inmost recesses of
the forest, where all nature was hushed to quietude, and silence reigned
supreme, the presence of the little bird figured in the accompanying
Plate, hopping about from stone to stone in search of its insect food,
now and then broke the monotony of the scene with its inward warbling
strain, which however is so feeble, that it can only be heard when
uttered close at hand.
The sexes present so little difference in colour that they cannot be
distinguished with certainty; the female is somewhat the smaller. The
young birds differ from the adult in having a few faint spots on the
throat, but which are entirely lost as they advance in age.
The nest of this species, which, as I have before remarked, is very like
that of the European Wren (_Troglodytes Europæus_), is made of leaves,
moss and fibrous roots, and lined with feathers; its site is various,
being sometimes under the shelving of a bank, and at others at the foot
of a tuft of grass or herbage, beneath a stone, &c.; it is quite
spherical in form, with a small neatly-made hole for an entrance. The
breeding-season includes August, and the three or four following months,
during which period two or three broods are usually reared. The eggs,
which are generally three in number, are of a dull flesh-white, freckled
and streaked with purplish brown, particularly at the larger end; their
medium length is ten lines and breadth seven and a half lines.
Centre of the forehead, lores, and a line beneath the eye black; over
the eye a line of greyish white; crown of the head, all the upper
surface, wings and tail olive-brown; wing-coverts tipped with white;
spurious wing blackish brown; throat white, striated with black; centre
of the chest and abdomen citron-yellow; flanks olive-brown; bill
blackish brown; feet yellowish white.
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