CHAPTER XIV. 



Other Rarities. 



THE country beloved of the Lyre Bird is also the home 

 of a species which, though not to the same extent 

 remarkable, is almost as rare. It is said that the 

 affinity of the species so far as locality is concerned 

 is responsible for the name applied to the bird here 

 described. Early observers who sought the Lyre Bird 

 regarded the Pilot Bird as being an unfailing guide to the 

 haunts of the former. Whether there is any truth in this 

 explanation of the bird's name we know not, but we do 

 know that in our experience the two species have invariably 

 been found close together. We believe also that other ob- 

 servers have noted the same fact. 



In the dark gullies around our week-end quarters, these 

 birds were fairly numerous, but their quiet ways and sober 

 colouring made it quite a simple matter to overlook them. 

 For some time probably we did succeed in overlooking them, 

 until one day we stumbled across them — figuratively, and 

 literally also. We were spending a few days at the town- 

 ship of Olinda previously mentioned, and while clambering 

 down a thickly wooded hillside, one of our party did actually 

 stumble and disturb a nest, the presence of which would 

 certainly otherwise have been overlooked. The contents 

 at once set up a great din, which proved their undoing. We 

 recognised that the species was a stranger to us. We 

 waited awhile, and a silent chocolate brown bird arrived on 

 the scene with a beak full of large moths and the like, which 

 it proceeded to dispose of in a manner which appeared to 

 please a very noisy brood. The parent then departed 



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