May,"] O'DoNOGHUE, Notes on Victorian Lyre-bird. ly 



reason of the greater evaporation of moisture, less congenial to 

 the larvae of insects on which the Lyre-birds wholly subsist. 



In the vicinity of the Dargo High Plains, when the snow lies 

 thick on the hills and in the valleys, and converts the pellucid 

 brooks that meander amongst the tree-ferns in the deep ravines 

 into broad sluggish streams of half-frozen mush, when the 

 gums are weighted with a fleecy mantle that occasions the 

 destruction of many a slender spray and sturdy limb, and the 

 less robust vegetation beneath its accumulated burden droops 

 earthwards, rendering unfamiliar familiar spots, then the 

 Lyre-birds, like the wombats and the wallabies, undoubtedly 

 find it hard to obtain a sufficiency of food. They may then be 

 observed on the crests or slopes of the hills under some log or 

 fallen tree where the radiation of heat on the side opposite the 

 sun has melted the snow and afforded them an opportunity 

 of scratching the ground in quest of insect larvae. When thus 

 occupied they arc not difhcult to approach. Often in the 

 gloaming, as one progresses noiselessly through the silent 

 colonnades of the woods, he is startled as a dark object darts 

 out from beneath some snow-swathed log near at hand, and 

 with a sudden shrill cry speeds across a white expanse towards 

 the covert margining a brook in an adjacent valley. 



The chief calls imitated by the Lyre-birds in the Crooked 

 River district were those of the Butcher-bird, Satin-bird, 

 Laughing Jackass, Harmonious Thrush, Black and Gang-Gang 

 Cockatoos, Strepera, Pennant's Parrakeet, Rosella, Wonga 

 Pigeon, White-throated Thickhead, Cuckoo-Shrike, White- 

 throated Tree-creeper, Pallid Cuckoo, Red Wattle-bird, and 

 Leatherhead. The call of the Coachwhip was also imitated, 

 but I failed to see or hear the bird during my residence in the 

 neighbourhood. The call, I assumed, was transmitted from 

 bird to bird from a locahty where the Psophodes crepitans 

 abounded. The sustention of the Jackass's laugh was, in every 

 instance, not of sufficient volume and duration to deceive one, 

 and there was a lack of wcirdness in the cry of the Black 

 Cockatoo ; but all other renderings were perfect imitations of 

 the calls of the birds mimicked. 



Lyre-birds are comparatively poor fliers, and, as a general 

 rule, trust more to their legs than to their wings to effect escape 

 from danger. The nature of the country they frequent — 

 for the most part deep, narrow valleys filled with a hetero- 

 geneous growth of almost impenetrable vegetation — renders 

 flight a less effective means of escaping danger than running. 

 Hence the practical disuse of the wings during successive 

 generations has undoubtedly rendered the bird's flight weak 

 and laborious. When about to take flight they invariably 

 launch off a log or ledge of rock on the hillside, or from some 



