366 NOTES ON THE VICTORIA LYRE BIRD. 



been taken '* in the face " — i. e., all the scrul) and trees np to, say, 4 

 feet 6 inches in diameter had been felled, bnt as they had not then been 

 burnt they lay in hopeless confusion, forming a tangled mass of logs, 

 branches, and scrub, through which young scrul) was growing. It 

 was, therefore, an awkward place for stock, or even human beings, 

 to get into — a fact that some of the birds had apparently recognized 

 by building their nests in it. Across the river lay the natural forest 

 forming the feeding and sporting ground of the birds, and contain- 

 ing some nests also. I found the nest in question one morning by 

 noticing the female bird fly, or rather float, noiselessly away from the 

 place on my approach. This is a common practice with the lyre bird. 

 A young bird, imfeathered save for tufts of down on its crown and 

 upper back and a few young feathers just breaking forth on the 

 crown, was in the nest. It screeched so vigorously on being disturbed 

 that the female bird quickly appeared, making meanwhile a semi- 

 clucking noise, somewhat similar to that of a domestic hen calling 

 her chicks. Whenever the little one gave its whistling screech the 

 mother made this noise and also gaVe vent to her own quaintly nie- 

 lodious notes, sounding like '' Koo-wuk', koo-wuk', koo-wow',*' with 

 a growl-like roll on the wow, and '' Qua-ack', qua-ack'," some like 

 the guttural of the common opossum. On calming down after the 

 young birds stopped screeching she imitated various birds," princi- 

 pally the tits, scrub wrens {Sericornis) , coachwhip bird {Psophodes 

 rrepitans), king lory {Aprosmietus cyanopygius), magpie {Gym,- 

 norhina leuconota), gray magpie {Stre/pera cuneicaudata) , laughing 

 jackass {Dacelo gig as) , black cockatoo {G aly ptorhynchus funereus), 

 butcher bird {Crcwticus destructor), sparrowhawk {Accipiter cir- 

 rhocepludus), etc. — principally the first three. She then Avalked lei- 

 surely down the sloping log, stopping every now and then to scratch 

 it — simply through force of habit, for it was quite dry and sound — 

 and then jumped onto the ground and resumed her scratching. All 

 this time she was giving a refined rendering of the liquid notes of the 

 common magpie. 



The place was a very unsuitable one for the camera, and, being 

 alone, there was difficulty in getting the photograph of the adult bird 

 (see plate in). She was very restless, and as a time exposure was 

 necessary, I was compelled to focus the camera on a certain part of 

 the log where she stayed for a second or two while walking down it. 

 Then, as I could get no stick long enough to touch the young one 

 from my post at the camera, I collected pieces of nnul and earth, and 

 threw bits of these into the nest. Whenever one hit the little bird a 

 screech followed, and the mother was on the log like a flash, but keenly 

 alert and ready to float into the scrub at the least sign of danger. 



" This is a very important note. Hitherto it was believed that only the male 

 lyre bird mimicked. — Eds. 



