182



Correspondence.



there for several years, but had been shifted once a few yards. He had often

seen the birds at their playing-place, running through the bower and tossing the

bones, berries, and other objects about with beak or claws. I was not so fortu¬

nate as my host, but had a good view of a male bower-bird in a pepper-tree at

the homestead. The collection of bright objects at either end of the bower was

fairly large, and consisted principally of bits of weather-worn green and blue glass

(from bottles), which formed a kind of mosaic on the hard, dry ground. There

were a few glass stoppers from sauce bottles, a piece of perforated zinc, numbers

of bleached sheep-bones, one or two green berries, twigs and leaves, an odd

feather, and, in the very centre of the bower, a large pellet of lead. The bower

itself was neatly and strongly built, and an excellent example of the architec¬

tural skill of Chlamydera maculatci.


I fear that, in the course of a few years, unless measures are taken for

their better protection, the Spotted bower-birds will share the fate of the Mallee-

fowls (Leipoci ocellata ) in the Mallee country of Victoria.


In a bush close to the bower-birds’ playground on the Murray islet a pair

of Crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lopliotes ) had a nest about three feet above the

ground. When I flushed the female the nest contained two eggs ; next morning

one had hatched, and a few hours later there were two chicks on the platform of

twigs. The parent birds were shy. A footstep a few yards from the bush was

sufficient to frighten the female, which went whirring from the nest to a dead

tree some distance away, where she would remain perched while anyone was in

the vicinity of her nursery. I tried on several occasions to photograph the

brooding bird, but in vain. The camera was placed at the side of the bush

opposite to the “avenue” approach to the nest, and was screened in branches.

Then I walked away ostentatiously, in full view of the female perched in the

dead tree. Hidden, I watched her through the glasses, but she remained calmly

on her perch—a still figure on guard. Once or twice in the course of an hour

the pigeon paraded the twisted grey limb to which she always flew on leaving

the nest, and more often she gazed around as if searching for some hidden danger.

I went for a walk, and returned to find the wary bird still on the dead tree,

watchful and patient. There were several nests of the Crested pigeon in the

pepper-trees at the homestead, but my luck was no better there, though the birds

were certainly less fearful than those of the islet. They, like the other native

birds on Kulkvne, enjoy protection, and one can approach them closely. But

the camera was new to the pigeons of the pepper-trees, and none would face it.

They wore out my patience, and at the end of a long afternoon I took the camera

from a perilous position on a high bough and acknowledged defeat.


Several old nests of the Crested pigeon were found in the bushes on the

islet, but only one pair of the birds appeared to be breeding there this season.

Crows, I learned, search diligently for the nests, and take toll of eggs and squabs.

Possibly some of the nests that I saw had been robbed by the big birds. The

wariness of the island pigeons may be due partly to the persecution of crows.



