^''^'^^^^■J Stray Feathers. 53 



endeavours to lure an intruder away from her nest were described 

 by me in a paper in T/ie Eniu.^ The same device is occasion- 

 ally resorted to by the male. In the Launceston district one 

 November day a Wren's nest was discovered, placed about 3 feet 

 from the ground, in a Lepidosperma tussock, and containing four 

 young, whose eyes were beginning to open, and upon whose 

 bodies could be seen the lines of sprouting feathers. The nest 

 was of grasses, lined with rabbit fur, and shaped like a big q^%^ 

 with the end sliced off. It was tilted slightly upwards, the usual 

 Mnlurus type of architecture. When we examined the young, 

 the male parent, near by, went through some curious antics to 

 lure us away, running low along the ground with shoulders 

 hunched up and wings trailing, tail bent down like a puppy 

 about to be whipped, instead of carried aloft in the usual jaunty 

 fashion. The appearance of the little actor when hunched up 

 on the ground in this fashion is curiously mouse-like. 



Pjignacity. — Although the male Blue Wren displays much 

 persistence in attacking and driving away others of his sex from 

 the neighbourhood of the breeding-ground, yet it is the females 

 which exhibit a surprising depth of hatred towards each other. 

 When approaching Gould's country, Eastern Tasmania, one 

 summer afternoon, we discerned a small brown ball rolling 

 about in the dust by the wayside, and squeaking vociferously. 

 My friend, Mr. H. C. Thompson, succeeded in capturing the 

 curiosity, which resolved itself, on close inspection, into two 

 female Maluri, locked together in an embrace by no means 

 affectionate, and digging with their beaks at each other. So 

 absorbed were they in their quarrel that they had heard nothing 

 of our approach, and two very scared Wrens shook out their 

 ruffled plumage and left my friend's hand hurriedly as soon as 

 separated. During the past spring, in a Devonport garden, I 

 witnessed a similar spectacle.— H. Stuart Dove, F.Z.S. West 

 Devonport. 



« 4s 4c 



Birds New to Tasmania. — Of the two following species I 

 can find no record of their having been previously found in 

 Tasmania : — 



Strix delicatuia, Gld., may or may not be a sub-species 

 of the European S. flaminca, Linn. Being a dimorphic form, 

 and without being able to satisfy ourselves on the matter of 

 their geographical plumages, there is no certainty of its true 

 position. Recently it has been raised to the position of a 

 species.-j- As a species its distribution has been known to be 

 Australia and New Guinea.^ On 6th May, 19 10, Mr. P. J. 



* The Emu, vol. ix., pp. 151-155. 

 t Brit. Mus. H. IJirds, i., p. 300. 

 :J: Mathews, II, Birds, p. 44. 



