38 
POPULAR HISTOEY OF BIRDS. 
sometimes it is even taken with the hand. When aroused, 
it flies lazily off with heavy flapping wings to a neighbour- 
ing tree, and again resumes its slumbers, till the approach 
of evening, when it becomes as animated and active as it 
had been previously dull and stupid."*^ It does not seem, 
like many of the night-jars, adapted for-extensive and easy 
flight, the wing being short and concave. Mr. Gould beHeves 
that a great part of its food consists of insects, which it finds 
resting on the boles of trees at night ; he has taken one, the 
stomach of which was filled with Phasmida and Cicada, in- 
sects which, he says, never move at night. It has great power 
in shifting the position of the outer toe backwards, a cir- 
cumstance which must give it considerable facility in creep- 
ing among trees. The male assists the female in the pro- 
cess of incubation ; the nest is flat and slightly constructed 
of sticks placed in the fork of a horizontal branch of a gum- 
tree [Eucali/ptus), apple-tree {AngojpJiofa), or swamp-oak 
[Casuarmd] , 
A species of this genus was for some time in the Zoo- 
logical Gardens, where its sleepy quietness, big depressed 
head, and large gape, with a dull sweep-like colouring, con- 
trasted strangely with the restless activity, lively plumage, 
and noisy manners of the parrots around it. 
