Vol. X. 



igio 



] Jackson, Notes on Tooth-billed Bower-Bird of N.Q. 87 



II, Ficiis (sp.) ; 12, Elettaria scottiana, F. v. M. ; 13, Croton 

 insnlaris, Bail. ; 14, Sienocarpus sinuatus, Endl. It is to be 

 noted that Nos. 4, 9, and 14 were found in use only on two or three 

 occasions. 



I should like to add here that, as Mr. Maiden has pointed out 

 to me, it is extremely difficult to name trees from leaves only. 

 I may also mention that the choice by the bird of leaves of a certain 

 structural characteristic is by no means a feature of only one 

 locality. My visit to the much more elevated Evelyn scrub on 

 the Herberton Range in November, 1908, was neccessarily a 

 hurried one, but I there found the play-grounds very numerous 

 and the Tooth-bills using precisely the same species of leaves as 

 at a lower elevation in the Tinaroo — in fact, I there collected 

 specimens of the leaves of Cryptocarya mackinnoniana and 

 Castanospora alphandi, which are also among those used by the 

 birds in the latter locality. From the part I visited at Evelyn 

 scrub to my Tinaroo camp would be, as the Crow flies, about 

 25 miles, over a dense intervening scrub or tropical jungle. It 

 would, therefore, appear that the natural instinct of the birds 

 to choose a certain class of leaf for play-ground ornamentation 

 is not a thing which in any sense is dictated by purely local con- 

 ditions. My predictions, as recorded in the special Eimi. of June, 

 1909, that the females would not visit the play-grounds during 

 their close breeding season, and that only the males (and few at 

 that) would do so. was borne out when I was ranging the scrub in 

 mid-December of 1908. The comparative silence of the scrub 

 then, after the noisy babble of mimicry and call of the previous 

 six weeks, was very striking. During that former period the 

 scrub-covered hill not far from the camp, and the dense glades 

 surrounding it, re-echoed with the characteristic " chuck " and 

 mimicry of these quaint vocalists as each sat in isolated pride 

 on his or her " singing-stick." Yet later, at the time above- 

 named (mid-December), when Mr. Frizelle and I again explored 

 the area of about five or six acres in the scrub in which, during 

 November, we had found over 20 occupied play-grounds, we found 

 the latter practically deserted, save by an occasional belated male. 

 The birds were no longer low-perched and noisy ; they had betaken 

 themselves to high tree-tops and silence, and were consequently 

 hard to discover. When nesting they are especially shy, and their 

 swift flight, interweaving the dense foliage, gives little chance to 

 the observer of sighting them, still less of following them up, save 

 where the scrub opens out a little. 



On 8th December, 1908, the silence of the Tooth-bills throughout 

 the day had been unusually marked ; but at sunset one of them, 

 high- perched and at a distance of about 70 yards from the camp, 

 started to give a most spirited selection of mimicry. Finally he 

 perched himself in a scrub chestnut or bean tree (Castanospermtim 

 australe), where he was joined by his mate ; then one of them 

 swooped downwards and away into the dense scrub at the back. 

 The remaining one was probably the male, and he certainly gave 



