L. 25, P. 17. Rain this afternoon. At four o'clock in the rain a number of small birds were flying back and forth between the mangroves and the coconuts. Shot seven of them and found that they represented three species. one a smoky brown honey-creeper, another a warbler (?), the third also a warbler(?), but with yellow on the outer margins of the wing feathers instead of plain brown. Sun. Jan. 3, 1937. The locals threw a dance last night which began about seven and ended at ten. It simply meant that they shuffled or pranced around a couple of fires to the tune of their own very monotonous repetitive chants and the beat of their drums. Shot a [illegible] among a number that came winging in around the coconuts at dusk. Had put on my headlight to try for the eyes of a few more when I made an interesting discovery: A pair of eyes shone down from a coconut. I shot. And the animal proved to be a little flying squirrel (marsupial) Petaurus. Subsequently I saw three sets of their eyes, shooting two and losing one. A last animal was located and shot in still another coconut tree. So evidently Petaurus is accustomed to making its home in the crowns of the coconuts, probably feeding on the flowers and newly set fruit. This habit may well have been recorded somewhere, but clearly it is an acquired habit if the coconut Petaurus is the same as the ti-tree savanna one; and it certainly looks the same. I rather suspect the fruit bats came across from Boigu. Tonight I hope to watch for them. They should be easy to see if such is the case. They are long-eared, and quite different from those of The Fly River and Tarara. They look like the single one shot at Daru by Archbold, and may in reality be Australian. Traps this morning (250 of them) brought nothing new: brachyrhinus and muscalis. One of the local people has taken his dogs and gone hunting, so perhaps something new may turn up as a result. Walked out this morning due north for about a mile to a large swamp bordered with ti tree; close by found some long-grass savanna dotted with big trees from a foot to eighteen inches diameter. Most of the country not flooded is covered with rather poor thin scrub with at intervals a really large tree two or three times the general height of the small forest. Shot a dusky honeycreeper, a black bird with grackle-like tail, a blue pigeon. Lots of plover around the swampy places. The stomachs of the Petaurus contained a little of what appeared to be vegetable matter - probably the flowering parts of coconut. The man with his dogs certainly got a result: namely a specimen of the wallaby I described last year with type locality at the Oriomo. This animal, a male is not at all badly chewed up. I have felt all along that the species should turn up along here west of Oriomo, and sure enough here it is. The insides of the ears are unpigmented, and the cinnamon legs and feet warmly colored. Its captor declares he got it out in grass country. And my two East Cape boys positively insist that this kind of wallaby occurs in their country, where there is "plenty, big grass", as well as the larger M. agilis. If this wallaby M. c. oriomo should occur beyond Moresby, or even in the grasslands of Moresby and Yule Island I should not be greatly surprised. After the specimen had been skinned I took the following measurements: length, ulna, 6 mm.; humerus, 50; tibia, 125;, femur, 100; epipubic bones, 25 mm. I've been shown the tail of Dactylopsila the 3-striped marsupial squirrel. And a boy on learning that I would purchase such immediately set out to get one. It is just as though some stranger from say Mars came to Newton, N.J. and asked about woodchucks. A score of boys there would know exactly where to go any time to get one or more. And these fellows often know the exact tree in which to look for Dactylopsila.