The Banksias are in blossom during a great portion of the year, and each flower as it expands is diligently examined by the Wattle-bird, which inserts its long feathery tongue into the interstices of every part of the flower, extracting the pollen and insects, in searching for which it clings and hangs about the flowers in every variety of position. The breeding-season commences in September and continues during the three following months. The nest is round, open, and rather small in size, generally placed in the fork of a small branch often within a few feet of the ground, and formed of fine twigs lined with fibrous roots. The eggs are two and sometimes three in number, of a beautiful salmon colour, strongly blotched at the larger end, and here and there over the remainder of the surface with deep chestnut-brown; thirteen lines long by nine lines broad. The sexes are only to be distinguished from each other by the smaller size of the female; and the young from the nest has all the marks of the adult, but much less apparent. All the upper surface dark brown, each feather marked down the centre with a minute line of white; primaries chestnut-brown on the inner webs for three parts of their length from the base; outer webs and remainder of the inner brown tipped with white; secondaries, wings, and tail-coverts greyish brown tipped with white; tail brown, tinged with olive, and all the feathers tipped with white; feathers of the throat and chest blackish brown at the base and white at the tip; feathers of the under surface the same as the upper, but with the white mark broader and more conspicuous; bill black; irides grey; feet vinous brown. The Plate represents a male and a female on a branch of the _Banksia serrata_, all of the natural size. [Illustration: ANTHOCHÆRA LUNULATA: _Gould_. _J. Gould and H. C. Richter del et lith._ _Hullmandel & Walton Imp._ ] ANTHOCHÆRA LUNULATA, _Gould_. Lunulated Wattle-Bird. _Anthochæra lunulata_, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., part v. p. 153; and in Syn. Birds of Australia, Part IV. _Dj̏ung-gung_, Aborigines of the lowland, and _Tur-dal-l_, Aborigines of the mountain districts of Western Australia. _Little Wattle-Bird_, Colonists of Swan River.