240 An Old Australian Bird-lover—Breeding of my Kagus


several pairs has the same experience regularly. Turning this pro¬

position over in my mind, I came to the conclusion that the birds

require more than a shrubbery and a large run for breeding. I therefore

removed them to an extensive lawn and gave them a cask, the open

side of which I turned to a wall, allowing the birds just room to go in

and out. They very soon made this cask their sleeping-place, and

when I saw a great intimacy between the pair after they had been about

six months in their new surroundings my hopes ran high.


I was not disapjminted, for missing the hen one day I saw her

sitting in the cask, but no egg. Looking into the cask next morning

(September 4) I found she had laid her egg—they only lay one—and was

incubating it right away. The birds had no objection to my fondling it.

In size it resembled a fowl’s egg, but in shape it was almost round.

It is a very striking egg in shape and colour. The ground tint is very

light stone, marked with a profusion of chocolate-gold blotches, the

remarkable thing being that part of the blotches appear to be on the

underside of the shell (or inside, if you like), and that one only sees

them transparent, which, however, is not so. The size of the spots

varies from little dots to the size of a grain of wdieat, longish and

mostly angulated. Of course, when I found that the birds were sitting

I removed all other inmates off this lawn, not that I feared that

the Kagus might become aggressive, but because I was afraid the

Seagulls, Plovers, Ducks, Curlews, or Magpies might take a liking to

the egg. The incubation was done alternately between the male and

female, and I never saw the egg left alone.


On October 5, after thirty-two days of incubation, the young

hatched— to the delight and joy of the whole household, for they are

great favourites with us. Like the egg I could remove the young and

inspect it without interference from the old ones. Its colour was the

reverse of the shell, in shape it resembled a young Lyre Bird. Its

ground colour, on a peculiar furry down, was chocolate, in parts shading

to black. Along the back-bone and on each side of the flanks ran light

stone, i-in. wide stripes. The head was exceptionally large and flat,

the crown of it like the body, chocolate with light stone gold stripes.

Eyes black and glossy, bill grey and short and peculiarly blunt. I may

say that the sexes of these birds can only be decided by the colour of



