42 • SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



male Lyre-bird in beats anything I ever beheld of what men call politeness. 

 I have heard and read of delicate attentions paid to our sex by men of noble 

 and generous dispositions, but I scarcely ever heard of such delicate attention 

 as I one day witnessed in this noble bird towards its mate. I saw her • 

 sitting in the heat of the meridian sun upon her nest, and the cock bird 

 sitting near her with his tail expanded like a bower overshadowing her ; and 

 as the sun moved, so did he turn his elegant parasol to guard her from its 

 rays. Now and then he turned his bright eye to see if she were comfortable, 

 and she answered his inquiry with a gentle note and rustle of her feathers." 

 Baron Cuvier, writing in 1859, says : "They are said to sing for a couple 

 ■of hours in the morning, beginning when they quit the valleys till they attain 

 the summit of a hill, where they scrape together a small hillock as they 

 exhume the grubs on which they feed ; on this they afterwards stand, with 

 the tail spread over them, and in this situation imitate the notes of every 

 bird within hearing, till after a while they return to the low ground." 



John Gould studied the Lyre-birds and gave us the first reliable account 

 of their habits in his "Birds of Australia," published in 1848, and after- 

 wards in several papers sent to the Zoological Society of London. 



Though differing in plumage and coloration, the three species appear to 

 have identical habits, and all destroy large numbers of more or less 

 destructive grubs, snails, and other forest pests. The life-history of Menura 

 superha, the most handsome of the three forms, applies equally to the other 

 two. It is the size of a small fowl ; the upper surface is of a uniform, dull, 

 brownish-black colour, and the under surface is lighter and silvery under the 

 tail. It is this unique tail that has been the cause of its undoing. In the 

 earliest days of settlement, " the blackfellows prized it for an ornament, as 

 well as the Europeans, who gave a great price for it." (Russell, 1839.) In 

 1861, Wheelwright, speaking of the Dandenong and Plenty Ranges in 

 Victoria, says : " The blacks make periodical excursions up into the ranges 

 about September when the birds are full feathered, and come back laden 

 with tails." Regarding the destruction of Lyre-birds for their tails, 

 I remember seeing them sold in the streets of Sydney, about 1888, for 

 half-a-crown a pair, but Mr. Aflalo's story ("A Sketch of the Natural 

 History of Australia," 1896), of two brothers in Sydney employing a number 

 of men to shoot these birds, and obtaining 500 dozen tails in a few weeks, 

 seems to be somewhat exaggerated. 



The Lyre-bird is a very active creature, and in spite of its size is seldom 

 seen, though often heard by the wanderer who invades its haunts. When 

 suddenly startled it has the curious habit of jumping upward into the 

 branches of a tree and there stopping. The tail hunters learnt this habit, 

 and with trained dogs soon " treed " the bird and shot it before it reached 

 the top. The nest is a large affair constructed at the base of a tree, often 

 hidden among tree ferns, and containing a single dark-brown blotched 

 egg. The nestling is a ball of brown fluff — '* all claws and beak," as a 



