Nov., 1928 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
97 
protected list. This, however, does not mean the slaughter 
has ceased, and they are fast nearing the point of extinc- 
tion. 
I will now say a few words on the nesting habits of 
some of the birds. First on the list come the beautiful 
rifle birds. These birds really belong to the Paradise * 
family. In Australia we have three Rifle birds. Most 
of you are familiar with the bird of the southern parts, 
at least, in the scrubs. A smaller one, the Victoria Rifle 
bird, is found from north of Townsville to Cooktown, and 
a larger one on Cape York. For a long while the eggs of 
these birds were much sought after by collectors, and a 
set of eggs from the Cairns district were described by 
Mr. A. J. Campbell as belonging to the Victoria Rifle bird.. 
This, however, w T as proved wrong. 
In 1892 the late Mr. Dudley Le Souef and myself 
landed on one of the Barnard Islands, where we spent a 
week, and were fortunate in finding a nest with a single* 
egg*. This, the type egg, is now T in the Australian Museum, . 
Sydney. The nest was a very loosely built structure, 
composed of large dead leaves, lined with a few vine ten- 
drels, and draped with the shed skin of a snake. It was 
placed in the top of a Screw Palm, or Pandanus. This 
placing the shed skin of a snake round the nest is a fea- 
ture peculiar to the Victoria and Southern Rifle birds. 
The Albert Rifle bird of Cape York does not use these 
decorations. Four years after finding the egg of the 
Victoria Rifle bird, in 1896, while wandering in the scrubs 
of Cape York, I came across a nest built in the top of a 
small palm about 6 feet from the ground, and on placing 
my hand in the nest, lifted out a beautiful pair of eggs,, 
which I at once recognised as belonging to a Rifle bird. 
While waiting for the return of the parent bird, to be quite 
sure of its identity, I heard a rustle in the leaves behind 
me. and turning round saw a small Vgoanna,” or Gould’s 
Monitor, holding a very large centipede l3y the head. 
For a while the “goanna” watched me, while the centi- 
pede crawled round its head in a vain endeavour to es- 
cape. With a sudden gulp the centipede disappeared, and 
I will leave to your imagination what that monitor felt 
like inside. 
The following year the eggs of the Southern Rifle 
bird were taken on the Richmond River, and so the nest- 
ing habits of the three Rifle birds were known. The note 
of the Cape York bird is a loud, clear whistle, repeated 
three times. 
