16 The Australian Lyre Bird. 



however, be inferred from the above that the cock bird is the 

 sole performer ; the hen will also both whistle and mock the 

 notes of other birds, but she does it in a more desultory man- 

 ner, never remaining long in one spot. 



These birds sometimes vary their entertainment with the 

 most amusing capers. A friend of mine once having followed 

 a pheasant to its roosting place, which in this instance was a 

 tall gum tree in a tolerably open situation, determined to be near 

 the spot by daybreak, in order to watch his manoeuvres, and, 

 if possible, obtain the bird. Accordingly, before break of 

 day, he posted himself near the tree, and soon after had the 

 satisfaction of seeing the bird descend from it, and at once 

 commence scratching and feeding on the ground below it. 

 This bird was evidently in a merry humour, for nearly eveiy 

 log he came across he mounted, made three or four pirouttes 

 on the top of it, and then on again, until he came to a full stop, 

 when, after mocking the whip bird, the laughing jackass, and 

 one or two others, he suddenly began revolving in a circle, the 

 diameter of which was scarcely greater than the length of his 

 own body, at such an amazing rate that it was impossible to 

 see his feet touch the ground. A charge of No. 4 shot, 

 however, cut him short in the middle of his gyrations, and he 

 proved to be a cock with what thebushmen call a half tail, i.e., 

 half plain, half fibrous. The tail feathers, at first wholly plain, 

 always commence shredding out backwards from their extremi- 

 ties to their springing, till they become wholly fibrous. I have 

 heard that in the case of very old birds the tail sprouts fibrous 

 like the pheasant wren, but I never met with an instance of 

 this myself. The Gipps' Land blacks believe that the hens 

 after a certain period get fibrous tails like the old cocks, but if 

 this is true, it must be after they have done breeding. The 

 dome-shaped nest and chocolate-coloured egg (they lay but 

 one) is generally placed either in the embankment of a deep 

 creek or gully, or else well hidden in the midst of the branches, 

 where they spring from the stem of one of a group of fern 

 trees. Where these trees grow thick, and their branches 

 interlace, their resemblance to a mediaeval crypt or cloister is 

 most striking, save, perhaps, that the cone-fretted stem of the 

 fern tree has rather a Moorish than a Christian look about it ; 

 and the thought has often struck me while wandering under 

 the melancholy boughs of these splendid Filices, how astonished 

 the Old World builders would have been could they have been 

 told that in the recesses of a country to them unknown, there 

 grew in wild luxuriance the living counterpart of their own 

 stone and mortar erections. I will just mention one fact with 

 regard to the nest which shows the extreme cunning of these 

 birds, viz., that it is almost always covered with a coating of 



