Rifle-birds 76 1 



the hind neck, and the sides of the face, neck, and throat are black, shaded with 

 purple, while from the lower throat there extends a large triangular patch of 

 burnished steel-green; the breast is velvety purple, the plumes of the lower 

 breast being edged with metallic olive-green, which is the prevailing color of 

 the remainder of the lower parts. The adult female is ashy brown above, and 

 mainly ochraceous buff mottled and barred with black below. The length of 

 this species is between eleven and twelve inches. These splendid birds make 

 their homes in the dense subtropical scrubs of southeastern Australia, especially 

 among the cedar bushes which skirt the mountains and creeks, where, during 

 the breeding season, they are easily found. The male is a rather noisy bird, 

 frequently uttering its call, which resembles the word gass, which is the ver- 

 nacular name by which it is known among the natives of the Richmond River 

 district. As the sun's rays gild the tops of the trees each morning, the male 

 Rifle-bird ascends to the higher branches of the pines and spends the morning 

 hours in sunning and preening his plumage, and in short flights from tree to 

 tree, during which passages he makes an extraordinary noise resembling the 

 shaking of a piece of new silk. The nest of this species, usually placed in an 

 entanglement of thick vines at some distance from the ground, is a rather bulky 

 structure made chiefly of green stems and fronds of ferns, and is ornamented 

 about the edge with snake skins and lined with rootlets and small twigs. The 

 eggs, two in number, are oval, fine grained, and glossy, and in color are a pinkish 

 buff marked and streaked longitudinally with reddish or purplish brown. 



Victoria Rifle-bird. The smallest member of the genus is the Victoria 

 Rifle-bird (P. victories), which attains a length of only nine or ten inches, and 

 inhabits a limited strip of country some two hundred and fifty miles long in the 

 rich tropical scrubs of northern Queensland. It is similar to the species last 

 described, being distinguished by its small size and by the purple of its breast 

 presenting the appearance of a broad pectoral band, bounded above by the 

 scale-like feathers of the throat and below by the abdominal band of deep oil- 

 green, and by the broad and much more lengthened flank feathers which show 

 very conspicuously. This species, and perhaps the others as well, exhibits at 

 least to a limited extent the peculiarity of having a " playground" which recalls 

 that of the Bower-birds, though it is not so elaborate. A Mr. Broadbent, quoted 

 by Campbell in his "Nests and Eggs of Australian Birds," says: "The bird 

 simply selects the broken limbs of a dead gum on the border of the scrub, a 

 broken palm, or perhaps a dead stump; but having chosen this, here he re- 

 turns at dawn day after day, and disports himself, now spreading his wings and 

 rubbing them against the surface of the playground, and then whirling round 

 with wings expanded. This he sometimes keeps up as long as half an hour." 



The nest of the Victoria Rifle-bird is an open, shallow, rather loosely con- 

 structed affair of tough branching rootlets and a few broad, dead leaves and 

 tendrils, and is lined inside with a layer of broad leaves and fine twigs; occa- 

 sionally, as in the last species, a snake skin is woven about the edge of the nest. 

 The two glossy eggs are flesh-tinted in color, streaked longitudinally with rich 

 reddish and purplish brown. 



