Andersen. — Xeir Zealand Bird-song. 



395 



happy insect under a leaf ; after the titbit he sat on a twig in the sunUght, 

 and, with bill partly open and tail quivering, sang his sweet, plaintive, minor 

 melody. It may have been a thank-offering, it may have been a requiem 

 — both appropriate ; but, considering the minor quality of the song and the 

 apparent gentleness of the bird, it was most probably the latter. 



Two days afterwards, on the 12th January, 1912, I again saw two feed- 

 ing. They kept close together, flitting quickly from place to place. Once 

 one of them, as it were, kissed the other — very quickly, just a peck; pro- 

 bably a bonne houche was offered and taken — a grubby affectionate kiss. 

 Now and again a very soft, barely audible, exchange of notes took place, 

 like monosyllabic endearments. I could not detect if they were uttered by 

 one bird only or if both took part ; it was as though they were saying You ! 

 You! You! You! (18). Two were heard uttering the cry and reply of 

 (12) ; and when they came and settled above me, busily peering, one con- 

 tinually repeated quickly the notes of (19). In the vocalization the d 

 sounded as when one speaks the word "dear" without letting the tongue 

 quite touch the palate. The first five couple of notes took little over a second 

 in utterance ; the tee tee was nearer a whistle. The theme of (20) was very 

 softly sung ; it was almost a bird-whisper, with a sound somewhat like the 

 rubbing of a wet finger on glass ; each group of eight notes was uttered in 

 a second. 



It looked very pretty to see the warblers searching for prey amongst the 

 misty-foliaged Coprosinas that her ■ and there grew in glimmering thickets 

 under the taller trees. The birds would try to settle on the thin springy 

 twigs, sometimes opening and closing the tail very quickly ; and sometimes 

 they would poise, fluttering, in one position, tail downwards and broadly 

 spread, so that on the ventral side they showed a bar of white along the tips 

 of the tail-feathers. When fluttering amongst the green leaves where the 

 branch-tips were too delicate for foothold, the waft from their wings made 

 the surrounding green quiver like mist blown by a faint wind. 



The Wren. 



The faint chirp of (3) was uttered whilst the bir.d was running up a 

 branch, constantly flitting its wings. No. (4) is practically a variant of (1). 



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A// A // // ru fu/u hj ra n n r; 



The notes of (5) and (6) were considerably faster than the throbbing chirp 

 of a cricket, but no louder, if as loud, and certainly not so penetrating ; 

 the slur e to c in (5) was at times a to /, as indicated. One wren, answering 

 to another, ran down in a vibrato of quarter-tones as in (7) ; there would 

 be ten or eleven notes in the drop, which only occupied about a second. 

 No. (8) is the cry of a young wren, which came to call. It settled on a twig 



