319 



gate. Having rested a few minutes, we resumed our climb for about two hundred yards further, and 

 again rested, when we were much amused once more to see two Lyre-birds, no doubt the same 

 pair, run out from a large rock close to us, then fly about five or six yards down the mountain 

 and perch on a projecting limb of a tree, where they remained watching us for a few minutes, 

 till a sudden movement of one of our party frightened them away, and we saw them no more, 

 perhaps because we had then almost reached the top of the mountain, and soon left the cliffs 



behind." 



The food of this species consists of 

 insects of various kinds, worms, terrestrial 

 Crustacea and small land molluscs, which 

 are usually obtained under fallen leaves 

 in damp parts of the scrub. 



The nests of the Lyre-bird are built 

 in the luxuriant vegetation growing on 

 the sides of secluded gullies and mountain 

 gorges, and are usually on or within three 

 or four feet of the ground, but some placed 

 in thick forks or stumps of trees, sur- 

 rounded with scrub, or in rocky chambers, 

 may be twelve to twenty feet high. They 

 are large rounded oval structures, with 

 an entrance in the side, and are outwardly 

 composed of thin sticks, twigs, dried fern- 

 leaves and mosses, neatly lined inside 

 with bark fibre, wiry rootlets, and long 

 downy feathers from the flanks and back 

 of the parent birds. Some nests have a 

 stairway formed of sticksobliquely crossed 

 from the entrance of the nest to the 

 ground, and which is used by the birds 

 when gaining access to or leaving the 

 nest. This is more often the case when 

 the nest is built between the stems of 

 two small trees, and no means are pro- 

 vided for ingress and egress. Sometimes 

 Jt / WWf Z^^SH^ li/ the nest is built on a ledge of rock, at other 



'' / V O ; /li !K ' times in the tangled roots of some fallen 



giant of the forest, or in the end of a 

 hollow log ; not infrequently it is con- 

 cealed in the fronds at the top of a leaning 

 tree-fern, whose slanting and roughened 

 stem forms an easy mode of access to it. 

 These birds often desert a nest if the 

 female is flushed while sitting, unless it contains a young one. 



Although one usually associates the nesting place of the Lyre-bird with damp fern gullies, 

 luxuriant vegetation and cool shady creeks, sometimes it is situated in the most dry and barren 

 parts of the country, in almost inaccessible rocky caverns. On the 22nd August, 1907, near 

 Colo Vale, in company with Mr. N. Etheridge and Mr. W. Chalker, I photographed and assisted 

 in procuring a nest of this species the latter had found. It was in one end of a rocky chamber 



NEST OF LVKK-BIRD. 



