SPOTTED BOWER-BIRD. 
“Differs from C. m. subguttata Mathews in having the yellow on the breast 
and abdomen much deeper and richer, flank markings bolder, less black on the 
throat and upper chest and the bill smaller.” 
North-west Cape, Mid-west Australia. 
Mr. W. B. Alexander has sent me the following note : “ One of the most 
remarkable discoveries that has recently been made as to the habits of 
Bower-Birds is that some individuals decorate the inside walls of their bowers 
by painting the sticks or grass-stems of which the walls of the bower are 
composed. 
“This was first noticed in some of the bowers of the Satin Bower-Bird 
{Ptilomrhynchits violaceus) in the National Park, Port Hacking, New South 
Wales, by Mr. E. Nubling, and wms put on record by Mr. A. H. Chisholm in 
the Sydney Daily Telegraph (vide Emu, XXIV., p. 150, 1924). 
“ Mr. Nubling has since watched a male Satin Bower-Bird at work. With 
some soft black substance in its bill it laboriously blackened the sticks on the 
inside of the bower by ruiming its bill up and down and smearing this substance 
along them. 
“In company with Messrs. Nubling and Chisholm and other Sydney 
ornithologists, I have inspected a number of these painted bowers. In 
some instances every one of the hundreds of sticks composing the inner wall 
of the bower had been blackened from top to bottom on the inside. In Mr. 
Chisholm s words: ‘ The dye, drying flat, resembled soot, or the aftermath 
of fire, and superficial observation would have suggested that the sticks were 
burnt, had it not been that only the inside of the wnUs was thus treated.’ 
‘ The black substance used by the Satin Bower-Bird, the nature and origin 
of which has not yet been ascertained, is soon washed off by rain and must, 
therefore, be freq^uently renewed. 
In December, 1925, Mr. D. W. Gaukrodger, after examining scores of 
bowers of the Spotted Bower-Bird {Chlamydera maculata) near Blackall, 
Queensland, discovered one in which the grass-stems of the inner wall were 
coloured reddish-brown for a considerable part of their length. Part of the 
wall of this bower wms brought back by him to Brisbane and is now in my 
possession. It will be deposited in the British Museum.” 
.333 
