62



Mr. R. Philupps,



females had not previously been sufficiently mature. These

love-parlours, each one built by a female for her sole use , rather

in the open and not far apart, and each most jealously guarded

by its fair owner, were of the shape of a horse-shoe magnet but

with the sides equidistant throughout their entire length, open

only at one end, and inside of about the same length and breadth

as the bird, the top of the barricade being about on a level with

the back of the squatting female, the sticks, woven together,

being laid flat, none upright. The female would enter and squat

in her love-parlour, the tail remaining towards the entrance,

whilst a male, with every imaginable and unimaginable contor¬

tion, accompanied by a continuous discharge of (vocal) fire-arms,

would make rushes and furious (feigned) assaults on the front of

the breastwork, the female sitting in a lump and not moving a

muscle. Every now and again, however, the male would slyly

work round to the rear and tweak the tip of the female’s tail.

This advance, at any tin;e perhaps but the very earl}^ morning,

or at any rate while I was looking on, was not considered correct,

and the female would slowly turn her head with what we will

suppose was an icy look of grave disapproval. The second

female, as I may call her, (in the autumn of 1904) was the most

energetic, and her fortress became a really formidable structure,

the parapet being raised pari passzc with the additions to the

platform. Every bird that approached was savagely driven away

with the exception of a female Rain Quail, who sat on her eggs

and brought off her brood scarcely a foot away and w^as never

molested—not until the chicks had come out were the shells

pounced upon. The second female was then courted by the

young male that died later, the breeding female, as I may dis¬

tinguish her, by the old male.


This summer and autumn, the birds being sexed with cer¬

tainty, I found that the foregoing seemed to be the recognised

•courting arrangement, the selected female, with or without her

protecting barricade, squatting lumpily on the ground, on the

proposed nesting-site, and in the nest itself, while the surviving

male sported before her. On the other hand, the rejected female,

at first favoured but afterwards deserted owing to an accidental

circumstance which will be narrated later, built or partially built



