THE SADDLE-BACK 93 



The saddle-baek is a noisy, chattering, and amiable bird, 

 which seems to regard its little fellow creatures with great good 

 will. A shrill note, unlike that of any other bird, repeated 

 several timas in quick succession, announces its sudden but 

 welcome appearance. Its movements are notabW prompt, rapid, 

 and decided, and "no sooner has it sounded its call-note," Mr. 

 Potts says, "than it emerges from its leafy screen, and bounds 

 before the spectator as suddenly as a harlequin in a pantomime. 

 From these abrupt movements, or flying leaps, it seems to 

 perform a role of its own, that appears almost startling amidst 

 the umbrageous serenity of the forest. Let the eye follow its 

 motions, which are so ciuickly changed, and watch the saddle-back 

 perched for a few moments on the lichen-mottled bole of some 

 fallen tree, its favourite position. The glossy black plumage 

 is relieved from sameness by the quaint saddlemark that crosses 

 the back and wings. The observer will probably notice that its 

 attitude is peculiar ; to use a colonial phrase, ' it has a strange set 

 about it.' The head and the tail are rather elevated; the feathers 

 of the tail take a gently sweeping curve; and the bird looks as 

 though it is prepared to leap. One more glance, and it is away, 

 climbing some moss-clothed trunk, or picking its food from 

 beneath the flakes and ragged strips of bark that hang from the 

 brown-stemmed fuchsia tree." 



The saddle-backs have a curiol^s habit of sometimes following 

 flights of canaries, or yellowheads, through the bush. Apparently 

 they act as scouts to the smaller birds. A very pretty theory has 

 l^een built up in connection with this habit. But it may fairly 

 be assumed that the real attraction of the saddle-backs is not of a 

 sentimental nature, but is merely a desire to obtain supplies of 

 food. Apart from the motives, good or bad, that actuate the 

 saddle-backs, they present a charming sight when attending the 

 flocks of little yellowheads in their journej^s through the forests. 



Mr. W. W. Smith has given a delightful glimpse into a wood- 

 land scene near Lake Brunner, in which saddle-baelffl and 

 yellowheads were the principal actors. He says: "I had 

 travelled on the banks and bed of a creek for abnost a mile, when 

 I turned to the right up a small narrow gully in search of ferns 



