Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by American Museum of Natural History.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
with the seducer of her husband. This we know because
sometimes the female Gerygone gives birth to a black egg
quite a new theory on parasitism, though they do not doubt
Lalages virtue evidently though it is parasited by
Cacomantis but I doubt they know this or often seen Lalages
nest. The extent it is parasited by Chalcites is quite
normal and not like the absolutely abnormally excessive de-
gree to which it suffers on Mare.
PACHYCEPHALA PECTORALIS LITTAYEI (LAYARD:- One of
the commonest species on Uvea and has spread even to the
farthest island, out on the chain running to the west. It
is plentiful but regularly spaced in all the tall forest
areas, a pair or party every acre or so, except in the
margins where tall forests adjoin garden lands (and in some
cases short forest) or short scrubs, in such places its
numbers are exceedingly high per acre. In tall forests it
feeds up to 30 feet and occasionally higher and spends 90
per cent of its time within 10 or 15 feet off the ground
and the greater part of that within 4 to 10 feet off the
ground. It will actually feed on the ground, often search-
ing in and about the butts and leaves of the birds nest
rock fern for molluscs (small tree molluscs) and insects.
In short, in forest behave exactly the same except that it
feeds at lower levels generally and seldom goes above 15
feet and never above 20 feet. It penetrates out into low
scrubs but does not remain and is generally scarce in
such areas, except at times of waves outwards. To a limited
extent it inhabits the pole-like ti-tree scrubs of the east