54 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
than the birds themselves. At any rate, during 
that two hours and fifty minutes I was the prey 
of remorse, compunction, and fear in no common 
degree, whilst the heedless Stitchbirds were dis- 
porting themselves in the woods. This it is to 
have a feeling heart. At funerals I always suffer 
more than the nearest and dearest of the deceased ; 
I weep more bitterly. 
As the season advanced there seemed a slightly 
marked movement of the species towards the 
ocean. Pairs, for instance, were to be met with 
nearer the coast in localities where they had. neither 
been seen nor heard before. ‘There was some- 
thing of a similar movement from the ridge-caps 
towards the gullies. Broadly speaking, the great 
bulk of the birds during the height of the breeding 
season were to be found in the depths of the 
steep open valleys, the central belt of the island. 
Four nests we were sure of, whilst the site of 
a fifth, known to myself only, was located to 
within a limb or so. Of these five, three were 
built thirty to sixty feet from the ground in huge 
puriri; the fourth in an immense taraire, also 
about fifty feet from the ground; the fifth—the 
Stitchbird is nothing if not variwm et mutabile— 
was at a lower elevation, and in a smaller tree 
—a tawa. Four of the nest sites were in valleys, 
the fifth on a ridge. With these nests, as is always 
the case in dealing with species whose habits and 
