i68 



STARLINGS. 



remarkable habit of forming a bower-like structure, which seems to serve them 

 as a playing-ground or hall of assembly. Their bowers are usually placed under 

 the shelter of the branches of some overhanging tree in the most retired part 

 of the forest. The base consists of an extensive and rather convex platform of 

 sticks, firmly interwoven, on the centre of which the bower itself is built. This, 

 like the platform on which it is placed, and with which it is interwoven, is 

 formed of sticks and twigs, but of a more slender and flexible description, the 

 tips of the twigs being so arranged as to curve inwards, and nearly meet at the 



1 10 83 — lULbAlIN ho\\i.K hiWU (i'Ul>l 'l:})u/uiS koOilfUU!,) 



top. In the interior of the bower the materials are so placed that the forks of the 

 twigs are always presented outwards, by which arrangement not the slightest 

 obstruction is afforded to the passage of the birds. The interest of this curious 

 bower is much enhanced by the manner in which it is decorated, both at and 

 near the entrance, with the most gaily-coloured articles that can be collected, 

 as the blue tail-feathers of the rose-bill and Pennantian parrots, bleached bones, 

 the shells of snails, etc. Some of the feathers are stuck in among the twigs, 

 while the bones and shells are strewed about near the entrances. The pro- 

 pensity of these birds to pick up and fly off with any attractive object is so well 

 known to the natives, that they always search their bowers for any small miss- 

 ing article, such as the bowl of a pipe, etc., that may have been dropped acci- 

 dentally in the brush. Mr. Gould found, at the entrance of one of them, a small 

 neatly-worked stone tomahawk, of an inch and a half in length, together with 

 some slips of blue cotton rags, which the birds had doubtless picked up at a de- 

 serted encampment of the natives. For what purpose these curious bowers are 

 made is not yet fully understood ; they are certainly not used for a nest, but as a 

 place of resort for many individuals of both sexes, which, when there assembled, 



