128 Bird-Song : and New Zealand Song Birds 
bill half open. The sounds tin tin aurr, which this year took the 
place of kree kraw krurr, were very quickly uttered; alone at 
times, and varying in number. They were very emphatic, and 
one would suppose they must rasp the bird’s throat to pieces. 
The tsrr had the sound of a corkscrew being forced through a 
new cork. The high, sweet, slurred note, sometimes sung by 
itself, was followed by the very soft, melodious phrase, which 
bubbled, like honey transformed to sound, in the throat of the 
bird, so softly that it could be heard only when comparatively 
near the singer;—some thirty feet below it. I several times 
heard this theme at full length, though more often it broke off 
with the tsrr, or with the slurred note. In 1910 (51) was noted, 
the vocalized whisper-song being broken by another of the tui’s 
strange expletives;—the sound on this occasion could well be 
represented by the words nut-cracker. Instead of the expletives 
thus breaking the song, an explosive note might take their place; 
a sweet loud note, an octave lower than the whisper-song. This 
would burst out as though the bird were not altogether able to 
repress the song. In January, 1912, the tuis in Stony Bay were 
most lavish of these whisper-songs and of love-songs. The notes 
of (52), which instantly vocalized sweet, a longecl boon, were the 
prelude to an exquisite bubbling whisper-song. The bird sat 
high in the sunlit head of a giant totara; I sat in the shadow 
at its foot. When not singing the delicious theme of (52), 
which was repeated over and over till one supposed all obduracy 
must be melted away, he was song-bubbling to himself, or to a 
hidden mate, in an inarticulate and barely audible ecstasy. This 
subdued throat-rapture was so soft and so varied, and the notes 
so lapid, and broken in interval, and again so runninglv 
blended in whistles, sighs, clucks, and constricted sounds, that 
I could note nothing definitely, and the song could only be 
likened to a light and liquid fall of music from the bell of a 
convoke ilus. I have been able to record little of this superb 
music; nothing but fragments, here and there, of the more 
definite matches. The song (53) opened and closed with a sharp 
clut, sounding like the opening and closing of the mechanism of 
a musical-box. The phrase lasted a little over a second. The 
