SATIN BOVVER-BIRD 365 
as I have been able to ascertain, it has never approached 
nearer to the town than Paraparap. Mr. Allen 
Noble frequently noticed small flocks at Merrijig 
Station, Pettavel, in the winter months of the year 
1902. I have not myself seen this species since the 
year 1890, when in July it was comparatively plentiful 
at Airey's Inlet, the old males being in the proportion 
of perhaps one in forty. 
There is as great a difference between the plumage 
of the old male Bower-bird and that of the female 
and young male as one could well conceive. The adult 
male has the whole plumage deep, shining blue-black, 
while the females and young males are of a greyish- 
green colour on the upper parts, lighter below with 
scale-like brown markings and with a wash of yellow. 
That the adult plumage is not attained in the first 
year is clear from a note of Mr. Mulder's as to a 
pair which took up their quarters in the garden of 
his house at Bambra ; that is, assuming that the 
birds do not make bowers until they have attained 
sexual maturity. 
This pair were both in the green, speckled phase 
of plumage. In a fir tree {Pinus insignis) growing 
over the kitchen they built a bower of fir sticks laid 
across several horizontal limbs of the tree at a point 
close to the main stem. It was about the size of a 
Magpie's nest, covered in at the top and with a hole 
at the side, and about it the birds played all day long, 
making at one time noises like the snarling of a cat, 
at another suggesting the whirring of a wheel, and 
