AND OTHER BIRDS 123 



CHAPTER XV. 

 THE RIFLEMAN. 



JLTHOUGH but a very little bird 

 the Rifleman adds much to the 

 life of the woods with his faint 

 "zee," "zee," "zee," his end- 

 lessly repeated wink and twinkle 

 of wing, and his restless search for insect 

 life. The diminutive size of the species 

 is probably of considerable assistance in 

 the struggle of life, for powers of survival 

 and increase depend by no means only on suitable 

 food supplies, recluse habit, number of eggs, or 

 rapidity of growth in the nestling. When, for 

 example, there is a paucity of building sites, the 

 numbers of the breed are limited perforce, and 

 I believe it is largely owing to the number of 

 holes and crannies suitable for nidification, that 

 the Rifleman is so plentiful. Of these small rifts 

 in dry wood, and orifices where the timber, 

 though dead, is sound, there must be a score for 

 each site useful to the Parrakeet and a hundred 

 perhaps for every one suitable for the Kaka. 



There are in New Zealand two varieties of 

 Rifleman, differing but slightly in plumage, the 

 one representative of the north, the other of the 

 south, and both seem to breed late in the season. 

 Of the latter, three nests were got by our party 



