54 



Camera Craft Notes. 



[ " 



ist July 



Storm-Petrels, and is so rarely \nsited that the Ternlets. too, are 

 fairly safe in their lonely nesting haunt. — Charles Barrett, 

 C.M.Z.S., R.A.O.U. Melbourne, 31/5/16. 



Satin Bower-Bird at Play. — On a day toward the end of last 

 year, a friend and I walked quietly along a scrub-hemmed coach- 

 road near the summit of Tambourine Mountain, about 30 miles 

 from Brisbane. Suddenly we heard, amid the medley of bird- 

 calls, a curious rasping note, suggestive of nothing so miich as 

 a circular saw at work in the distance. I knew the note well. 



Satin Bower-Bird Working at Bower. 



FROM A PHOTO. BY 



H. CHISHOLM, R.A.O.l 



It was the ecstatic, half-crazy " wheeze " of the full-plumaged 

 male Satin Bower-Bird {PUlonorhynchiis holosericeits) as he 

 pirouetted about the bower. 



Creeping .stealthily through the tangle, we approached the spot 

 whence the sounds seemed to come. So engrossed was the bird 

 in the dancing that it was continued till we were within 12 yards 

 of the performer. Then one of us trod on a stick. Instantly 

 there was a startled " Chuck, chuck," a flutter of wings, and a 

 flash of blue-black feathers ; there would be no more dancing for 



