THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
the time of my visit and there was no other house for many miles. These 
birds are wonderful mi m ics.” 
Mr. A. G. Campbell has written me : “ In a belt of box (eucalypt) saplings, 
Lower Wimmera, October 1898, I examined a bower. The measurements 
were thirty-six inches in length and twenty-one inches in width externally, 
while the passage itself was only nine inches wdde. Around the bower was a 
miscellaneous collection of pieces of rag, bits of lead (from a tea chest) and 
wire, while at either end were heaps of bones and numerous pieces of coloured 
glass and broken bottles. The floor of the bower was strewn with quite a 
number of short pieces of wire. The number of bones was found to be 334 
and were nearly all the vertebrae of lambs. The most of them were placed at 
one end while the broken glass preponderated at the other. The birds had 
been very industrious in collecting the material, for the pieces of cloth and 
tea-chest lining must have been carried from the homestead, a distance of 
over half a mile.” 
Bernard has recorded from the Richmond district. North Queensland: 
“To be seen fairly frequently about scrubby districts. A ‘ playhouse ’ that 
I found was shortly after abandoned and dismantled, the best of everything 
being removed to a new site three or four himdred yards away.” 
S. W. Jackson contributed a lengthy and complete article to the Emu 
(Vol. XII., pp. 65-104, 1912) entitled “ Haunts of the Spotted Bower-Bird,” 
to which reference must be made by the student, I here can only quote a 
few items : “ The Spotted Bower-Birds were about the camp at daylight this 
morning, and appeared very tame. When away from their playground and 
my camp, and in the bush, these birds appeared extremely shy, and it was 
really most difficult to get near them ; but m contrast to this they would calmly 
and fearlessly hop and feed about within 5 or 6 feet of me as I sat at the front 
of my tent writing my notes or having my meals. Sometimes they had a 
peculiar habit of stretching their necks when they looked dowm from a tree 
near the bower or my camp, and thus assumed quite a stiff and rather lengthened 
appearance. The flight of these birds, though fairly rapid, appears at times 
somewhat flappy and laboured, the wings every noAV and then being closed 
against the body. The flight usually consists of a succession of long, wave¬ 
like swoops, and it is when the bird rises to these that the vings close, and 
the few flaps take place on the fall after each rise. When on the wing the 
birds generally travel in a very straight line, and seldom divert to the left or 
right, but keep straight ahead for the spot for which they are making. They 
are very difficult birds to follow (especially where timber is tliick) owing to 
their direct flight, and they are soon lost to view. They are not high-fliers, 
and frequently keep just a little above the tree-tops. . . . When anyone is 
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