AND OTHER BIRDS 119 



the white streaking and pencilling less well 

 marked. 



During the first week of November at Mason 

 Bay McLean got two nests of the latter bird, the 

 one containing a single egg, the other three 

 young birds. Next day the nestlings were found 

 to have been destroyed, the marauder probably 

 from the situation of the nest, a rat not even 

 having had the excuse of real hunger, for I 

 found one of the dead nestlings stiff on the 

 herbage below. This nest had been lined mostly 

 with Weka's feathers, but amongst them were a 

 few evidently collected from the Harrier Hawk, 

 the Pukeko, and the alien Goldfinch. There 

 were also one or two tiny tufts of wool, a 

 substance I had never noticed before in a Fern 

 Bird's nest. The other nest was in a stiff rush 

 bush, embedded in the dead stems of previous 

 seasons' growth. Deep it was, as are all Fern 

 Birds' nests; and in it the little inmate sat, 

 entirely hidden save for the beak pointing sky- 

 wards, and for the shafts of the long abraded 

 tail, stuck straight up at right angles to the bird's 

 back. 



The eggs of the Fern Bird are really beyond 

 imagination lovely, most elegant in shape, frail, 

 of a diaphanous pink spotted with dots of brown, 

 innumerable as stars in clear darkness, freckles 

 on a fair beauty's face, their shell too exquisite 

 indeed for rude, human touch, treasure fit 

 only to lie in a Fairy Princess's palm, to be 

 brushed by her lips, to be lovingly pressed to 

 a bosom smooth and warm as the soft feathers 

 of the mother bird. Both cock and hen 

 added from time to time a feather to 

 the nest. The hen was especially provident in 



