A BIRD'S DILEMMA 27 



then noticed that the two eggs lay rather wide 

 apart. Shortly afterwards one of the birds, which 

 I judged to be the male, returned, and in getting 

 on to the eggs — which it did by pushing itself 

 along the ground — it must, I think, have moved 

 them still farther from one another. At any 

 rate it became necessary, in the bird's opinion, to 

 alter their relative position, and in order to do this 

 it went into a very peculiar attitude. It, as it were, 

 stood upon its breast, with its tail raised, almost 

 perpendicularly, into the air, so that it looked some- 

 thing like a peg-top set, peg upwards, on the 

 broad end, the legs being, at no time, visible. Thus 

 poised, it pressed with the under part of its broad 

 beak — or, as one may say, with its chin — first one 

 egg and then the other against its breast, and, so 

 holding it, moved backwards and forwards over the 

 ground, presenting a strange and most unbirdlike 

 appearance. The ground, however, was not even, 

 and despite the bird's efforts to get the two eggs 

 together, one of them — as I plainly saw — rolled 

 down a httle declivity. At the bottom some large 

 pieces of fir-bark lay partially buried in the sand, 

 and under one of these the egg became wedged. 

 The bird was unable to get it out, so as to bring it 

 up the hill again to where the other egg lay, for 

 the bark, by presenting an edge, prevented it from 

 getting its chin against the farther side of the one 

 that was fast, so as to press it against its breast 

 as before — though making the most desperate 

 efforts to do so. Wedging its head between the 

 bark and the ground, it now stood still more per- 

 pendicularly upright on its breast, and, in this 



