58 i Mr. AY. R. Ogilvie-Grant on Birds 



is a hoarse cough, and can be only heard for a couple of 

 hundred yards, while the booming of the males can be 

 heard for a couple of miles. Therefore I think it likely that 

 the males take up their places in the ' bowers/ distend their 

 air-sacs, and give vent to their love-songs, and that the 

 females, attracted by the sound, come up to see the show. 



" Though one may hear plenty of them in the evenings, it 

 is never possible to tell where they are within a mile, as they 

 do not keep on calling long enough for one to hunt them 

 up. They start with a couple of short grunts, and then 

 utter five or six deep measured notes like the sound of a 

 muffled drum, the loudest in the middle. The male repeats 

 this series about three times in the daylight and is then 

 silent, and other Kakapos, perhaps miles away, take up the 

 sound. On this ridge we got quite close to a calling bird, 

 and can testify as to the power of the note. I could feel the 

 vibration of it, and likewise my boy, who was holding the dog 

 thirty yards away. I thought the drummer was just at my 

 feet, and we stood still for a long time in hopes that he 

 would commence again, but he was silent, and the dog 

 ultimately found him 40 yards away hiding under a log. 

 We had come up with all caution, stopping when he stopped 

 and walking while he was drumming, yet he seemed to have 

 taken alarm. This will show how hard it must be to get 

 right up to a bird, if he takes alarm at that distance. This 

 happened about 4 p.m., but, as a rule, very few birds are 

 drumming so early. In our fortnight's ramble we saw very 

 few ridges that had Kakapos' ' bowers' on them. On many 

 there were none, and on others only one or two, and we never 

 found them below an elevation of 500 or 600 feet above 

 the sea. The birds have peculiar valves in the nostrils, 

 which are larger in the males, and may be a part of the 

 apparatus for drumming. The word ' Kakapo' is compounded 

 of two Maori words : ' Kaka,' a parrot, and ' po,' night, which 

 is very appropriate, because I think they are the only Parrots 

 that feed at night. They have small eyes for night-birds, and 

 often climb trees in the daytime to sit in the sun after a 

 spell of wet weather, which shows that it is not the light 



