76 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
selves simultaneously. The efforts of each of the 
four partners in the brood to distract and allure, 
their excitement, anger, and apprehension, then 
announced their parenthood as surely as Solomon’s 
proposition to divide the child discovered the true 
mother. Later we had a second nest, also con- 
taining young, under the camera. As in the first 
case recorded, we were sure of the four birds, but 
could not actually identify them until as before 
the youngsters were handled. ‘Then, as in the 
first instance, the four partners fluttered about 
the camera in a frenzy of alarm. A third case 
gave similar results. Besides these three nests 
actually under the camera, watched and photo- 
graphed from the distance of a few feet, there 
occurred dozens of instances, where nestlings were 
observed, perched side by side in the bunched 
tops of the bare, spray-scorched, wind-blown 
kanuka. As with youngsters in the nest, it is 
difficult if not impossible in the dense greenery 
to particularise the parents. Hven a third partner 
seemed sometimes dubious, especially as the nest- 
lings were soon coaxed from our observation into 
thicker and more distant covert by the sight of. 
food alternately offered and withdrawn. ‘Twice, 
however, by climbing isolated kanuka-trees, secur- 
ing the newly emancipated brood and placing them 
on the ground, the four parents appeared together 
at one and the same time. In addition to the 
