CHALOOPHAPS. 125 



when suddenly the loud report of a gun was heard in the close vicinity, but it never (lew nor even 

 hastened its pace. In the brushes, too, these Pigeons may be met with walking over the fallen 

 leaves, but one's attention is more often directed to them as they pass along some bush track, or 

 during (light. Many are trapped with square " cribs " formed of straight green sticks, crossed 

 near the ends and held in position with wire, the longer sticks at the bottom, and gradually 

 becoming shorter at the top. It is held up by means of a forked stick resting on a green V 

 shaped vine, extending from the back to the front of the trap ; immediately under the vine 

 where the forked stick is resting a short forked stick is placed underneath, and maize is scattered 

 about beneath the trap. Immediately the bird jumps on either side of the V-shaped vine to 

 get at the maize strewed more thickly inside, the forked sticks are released and the Pigeon 

 caught. Birds trapped are generally caught by inserting a hand and forcing aside the sticks 

 near the top, replacing them again after the Pigeon is transferred to a cage. The traps are cf 

 various sizes, according to the species desired to be caught. That used for the present species 

 is about hfteen to eighteen inches square, and eight to ten inches high, those used for Wongas 

 being eighteen inches to two feet square, and ten to fourteen inches high. At Ourimbah I ha\'e 

 seen many of these traps placed in different parts of the brushes, very frequently close to the 

 roadside, and they are usually visited two or three times a day, especially in November, igoi, 

 when these birds were unusually numerous. The owner of the trap I photographed, here 

 reproduced, informed me he and his brothers had caught nearly three hundred birds during that 

 year. Not only were Pigeons caught in them, but often Cat-birds ( .Ehiroedus viridis) and 

 occasionally Lyre-birds (Mciiiiya siiperha). It is now, however, in this locality a thin^' of the 

 past, those beautiful brushes, overgrown with a luxuriant vegetation consisting to a great extent 

 of palms and ferns, are no more. All of it, with the exception of a patch here and there, has been 

 felled and burnt off, and the land tilled and planted with fruit trees. These birds are still to be 

 found further afield, where there are great expanses of virgin brushes, either towards the Pacific 

 Ocean, or due west on the mountain ranges, but not in the numbers they were a decade ago. 

 In October, igio, I met with this species on Lord Howe Island sparingly distributed among 

 the Palm and Banyan groves. Here, too, it was remarkably tame, and Messrs. Etheridge and 

 Thorpe, in 1887, often snared it with a noose placed over its head, on the end of a long stick. It 

 was breeding at the time of my visit, and its somewhat monotonous " coo-coo " could be heard 

 almost from sunrise to sunset. Week after week several birds could be heard in the same parts 

 of the bush in Roundy's Glen, probably each attendant on its sitting mate. Often, too, they 

 were seen on the track or on the ground among the light undergrowth, and among them young 

 birds were noted with black bills, this part being red in the adult. They were also seen en the 

 track close to the sea beach leading to Mount Gower. 



Its food usually consists of seeds and berries, obtained mostly in the brushes it frequents. 

 It will also frequent the neighbourhood of stables, camps, or wharves in outlying districts to 

 pick up the grain spilled by horses, or dropped during shipment. 



Mr. H. R. Elvery writes as follows from Alstonville, New South Wales :— " Chalcophaps 

 chysochlova breeds freely in the big scrub district of the Richmond River. The nest is placed at 

 varying heights from the ground. I once took a set of eggs from a nest built two feet six inches 

 from the ground, but this is unusually low. The nest, which almost invariably contains two 

 eggs, is very often placed on a thick mass of Lawyer vines lying horizontally, and at other 

 times at the end of a horizontal limb, but can nearly always be reached. I have never had to 

 use the scoop to take the eggs of this species. I have before me a record of twenty-one sets of 

 eggs, which were taken during several seasons in the months from September to January 

 inclusive. " 



From Copmanhurst, New South Wales, Mr. George Savidge writes me as follows: — " The 

 Little Green Pigeon (Chahophaps chiysochlora) is freely distributed throughout the Clarence 



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