THE STITCHBIRD 57 
and rain. lLianes of various sorts hung from 
above—convenient ladders by which the birds 
could drop or could mount like agile monkeys 
with erected tails. The orifice almost immediately 
narrowed, so that a man’s hand and arm could 
not be inserted without artificial widening of the 
hole, yet it was into this narrow dark tube that 
the birds could dive from above with tight-shut 
wings or emerge into the open with the velocity 
of bullets—doubtless their long cat-like whiskers 
help them in these remarkable feats. Guarded 
thus by a bulwark of the toughest timber in New 
Zealand, and safely concealed within the heart of 
a living tree, the nest was built. Its foundation 
was composed of sticks, some of which measured 
over nine inches in length, and were of the girth 
of twigs that Shags might have used. On this 
substantial base was placed a superstructure of 
coarse rootlets, manipulated to the desired semi- 
circular shape, then finer rootlets interwoven and 
intermixed with a very few small Robin feathers $ 
lastly, the five pure white, shining, glossy, luminous, 
elegantly pear-shaped eggs were laid on an un- 
mixed bed of brown tree-fern scale. Late in 
December this nest was found to be deserted, 
remnants of three eggs lying below the orifice. 
In the nest itself two remained, one incubated 
almost to chipping point, the other addled. 
On the lip of the hole was a tell-tale scatter 
